An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
An economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions.
Capitalism precludes only -regulated- monopolies, that is, monopolies which exist only because of government intervention. That there are markets with prohibitively high costs of entry and difficulties with increasing market penetration is an unavoidable occurance in capitalist society. Consumer protection legislation is, for the most part, contrary to the core of capitalism as are intellectual property laws. Both seem to be required, though, to keep the capitalist-ish societies functioning smoothly.
Same with several centers in Saskatchewan (a province in Canada.) My parents have had it since it was rolled out in the town of 30,000 they live in. It goes down periodically, sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours or days.
I'm doing nothing of the sort. The RIAA breaking the law (and lobbying for laws to protect their copyrights) doesn't in any way justify my unauthorized use of their intangible property. There isn't any fundamental right being infringed, so calling it civil disobedience doesn't really fly either (at least with respect to "new" music).
You may have a case that works entering the public domain is a fundamental right of society. I don't agree, but that's an entirely separate issue.
This is going to come off as flamebait, but that logic taken to absurdity boils down to: rape victims shouldn't file civil suits against rapists that couldn't afford hookers, or that victims of carjacking shouldn't file suit against those who carjack them, because the carjacker couldn't afford their car.
Even if it was specifically targeting people who couldn't afford cds, they are noncustomers benefiting (arguably with most major label crap) from copyrighted works without paying. Lower prices don't necessarily imply that violators will purchase enough to achieve higher profit for the recording industry either. There are goods, and major label crap is one of them, which consumers will not purchase at any price. They may, however, consume them at no cost. The common response that someone who wouldn't have paid anyway should be allowed to violate copyrights is ridiculous. If that were the case, even people who are willing to pay $15 (or whatever) for a CD have little, if any, reason to pay.
Under current law, they're going at it exactly the right way - filing against flagrant violators of their copyrights.
If you use unambiguous prefixes, like the IEC has defined, 2^64 is 16 exbibytes. Which happens to be (roughly) 18 billion gigabytes, or 18 exabytes. I'm not sure why everyone insists on confusing the matter by using base 10 prefixes when there are base 2 prefixes available that are unambiguous.
Re:the whole IP issue is invalid
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
Examining each individual that might be the case, however when looking at the whole situation you yourself admit that their claim is occasionally true. If it is true for one indivudal, then piracy and other IP rights infringement has deprived the copyright holder of the value of whatever it is that was copied. It only takes one case for their claim to be true.
The potential customer did deal with them, if only indirectly. The potential customer made use of their widget, whatever that tangible or intangible widget might be.
Leaving that aside, in a free market system there isn't legislated consumer protection with respect to purchase agreements. In your free market, the seller is free to apply whatever condition of sale they wish, including restricting what you can do with the widget, and specifying their terms of your redistribution, repackaging, and licensing the widget to others. Like it or not, a free market isn't a utopia for the little guy.
If the public decides it can share copies of whatever widget, and the "right" of the public to share copies is legislated, then widgetmakers to sell widgets on their terms are infringed. Imposing conditions on sale of tangible goods/service and on sale of intangible goods/service should be the right of the buyer AND seller, at least in a free market it should. So can the business cry foul because a potential customer chooses other means for getting the product? In a free market, if the initial sale included conditions about reselling, redistributing, sublicensing, or giving away then absolutely the can.
The current copyright system blows, but would you rather there be a a different sales contract for everything you buy? Not me. I'd rather there be legislated consumer and producer protection with respect to intellectual property.
The Street will do what is in *it's* best interest, which means controlling the market (ahem, not a free market then eh?)
Not a regulated market, you mean. In a free market, individuals and groups can collude all they like. It's regulation which would attempt to prevent this. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, corruption stands firmly in the way of regulation being effective, so collusion will continue to run rampant on Wall Street.
Point 2. The question isn't whether or not you can download music you want, its whether or not you can upload music you want. You are only legally permitted to share an original, licensed media. In the case of CD's, you are allowed only to share the original CD. You are not, however, to share copies of the original CD.
Point 3. According to http://www.oia.ucalgary.ca/cpi/tables/Canada.pdf , you're looking at paying about 1.63 times the nominal price of a CD than you paid in 1985. That $20 CD in 1985 would cost you $32.60 now, instead it costs $15-$20, or roughly 1/2 what it did then.
Last Point. The last time the music industry shut down napster, there were other economic forces at work which contribute to the drop in music sales.
Don't get me wrong, I think there are better ways for the RIAA and equivalent organizations to earn more money.
If you look at the responses that've been modded up, you'll see that there are a lot of people claiming all they want is a phone, "and..."
This is why more and more phones are having more and more features. One phone that has an address book, camera, games, or whatever else is going to have a lower unit cost from having to produce and carry one phone for each subset of features. And when carriers charge for ability to use features on their network, they can get more subscribers to these pay features (even if they don't get used) because its just a couple bucks a month, and the phone can do it anyway.
Of course I'm not comparing computer crime to other crimes which are more personally intrusive. They are only related insofar as they're immoral acts on the part of the perpetrator.
However in those cases the victim is critical in determining sentencing. You can't have a consistent code if you apply an "equal sentencing for all victims" to some crimes and not others.
That said though, you still aren't "calling for it" by leaving your door unlocked. Its still entirely the fault of the thief. I have no legal or moral obligation to secure every aspect of my life against providing opportunities for the morally bankrupt to act immorally.
The "fault" in leaving your car open is that you're not abiding by the terms of your insurance which require that you lock your car in order to qualify for reimbursement after a theft. You haven't held up your end of the deal, so they don't have to pay you. If you report the theft to the police they can still charge the thief.
By your reasoning shoplifting is the stores fault for not keeping the store locked. Stationary supply theft from offices by employees is the employers fault for not strip searching everyone as they leave the building every day. Rape is probably the victims fault for not being armed with an automatic weapon to thwart attackers. These are all obviously assurd, and believed only by those incapable of recognizing the moral responsibility of individuals.
In a nice rosey world it'd be nice to say that the role of the victim shouldn't be a factor for sentencing. I'd suggest that there are plenty of cases where the victim's identity is critical in sentencing. Violent crimes against children (being unable to adequately protect themselves) are generally harsher in the punishment of the criminal. Sexual harassment by employers is treated differently than sexual harassment outside of the workplace. Maybe they shouldn't be handled differently. Given that they are handled differently and most people find this acceptable, it would be inconsistent to say that the victim in thievery shouldn't matter whatsoever.
I'm not obligated to close my front door, and I have a reasonable expectation that law abiding folk won't come in uninvited. Why should a wireless access point be any different?
There is no legitimate reason to use someone else's internet connection without their permission or knowledge. I'm not entitled to your resources, you're not entitled to mine. These are pretty simple, straightforward concepts which reasonable and courteous people respect and to which these people abide.
They shouldn't have to put a flag saying 'Do Not Enter' for the same reason I don't have a flag saying 'Do Not Enter' on the gate to my back yard, on either garage door, or on either entrance to the house. These are my resources, and decent law-abiding folks don't try to enter without my permission.
A closer analogy might be a parking stall at an office building. I generally assume that off-street parking is private, unless otherwise marked. So sure, I could probably use that off-street parking if I wanted to, and maybe nobody would notice or mind, but that doesn't make it right for me to do so. Likewise, if I connect to a wireless access point, unless I know that I have permission to do so, I don't. I probably could, and I might not get caught using their resources, but that doesn't make it right.
In your case, your laptop being configured to automatically connect to any base station upon waking or boot is your problem, not H*neywell's. Your configuration options represent your decision to use resources whether or not you have permission.
In the case of consulting or contracting, you and your employer are responsible for negotiating what resources you should have access to, and how those resources may be used. In the case of an office building, for a laptop user, this should cover wireless usage. Since you 'stumbled upon' H*neywell's network, and assumed that it was a resource of the company at which you were working, its obvious that you and your employer neglected to do this.
I'm more inclined to believe that although H*neywell should have taken better precautions, you (not them) are to blame for your intrusion into and use of their network.
To Sun, Linux is as much as a threat as Microsoft, and their strategy is the same: make the OS irrelevant by replacing it with a Sun-controlled platform that runs on top of the OS. The Linux community should be as paranoid about that occurring as Microsoft management is. Sun is, ultimately, not a friend of Linux.
Wouldn't that make Sun not a friend of "open source and open standards with respect to Linx", rather than not a friend of Linux? Not everyone involved with linux cares if whats done on top of linux is "open".
The pci and rambus busses don't need to keep up. The peak throughput only needs to be serviced within the scsi chain. Buffering on the scsi adapter could deliver a relatively high sustained transfer rate from the scsi chain to the pci bus, within pci limitations.
It may be that some people are drawn to the anonimity of the internet, but that doesn't make it 'right'. Why should you be entitled to a medium free of responsibility and accountability that extends beyond the bounds of your legal rights and freedoms in the 'real' world? I guess its fashionable to claim that you're entitled to complete privacy, anonimity and absolution of accepting the consequences of your decisions.
The other thing to note is that this was near on 15 years ago. The internet was a MUCH different place then. This sort of thinking was common. Commercial participation in many net communities amounted to intrusion. The many 'anonymous' activities currently available had yet to be conceived.
It really wouldn't be so terrible for a network to exist now, that had some of the constraints of the internet back in the day. Thats not to say the current net should just go away, but some of us wouldn't mind the 'old days' all that much.
I often question if 'stealing' satellite signals really should be illegal. Those signals are there for the taking and the strength of the signal varies in no measurable way if more dishes recieve it..
Satellite companies make no effort at all to prevent their signals from being available to non-subscribers. The entire model is based on the fact that the signal IS available to everyone in a particular geographic region.
If I am able to decrypt these signals with a device of my own design, I should be able to do so. If I can convince my neighbor that my device is worth 3 easy payments of $49.95, that too should be well within my rights.
I don't see my local water company complaining about people stealing rainwater or water upstream from their intake. I've yet to see GE up in arms about anyone stealing the light from their lightbulbs to grow pot in the basement.
Monsanto tried to complain about people 'stealing' their precious crop secrets when nearby crops showed the same genetic traits. It was determined that Monsanto had no recourse. Why? Because their 'secret' product wasn't prevented from spreading to nearby crops. Satellite signals are also not prevented from spreading to non-subscribing dishes.
*shrug* I'm willing to accept a lot more than some of the tin-foil hat crowd on/., but until these satellite services keep their shit off my roof I have no sympathy for them. Its hardly my fault their model is distributed for anyone to use.
So by your thinking then any industrial accident would result in that company never being sold again? Who would purchase a company if doing so meant that it was legally their fault the accident happened in the first place? And would these companies never again have a CEO? Of course not, thats just plain stupid.
If Joe Blow became the CEO of Ford tomorrow, would that mean that he should be prosecuted for exploding pinto's? Of course not, thats fucking ridiculus. Joe blow had nothing to do with any phase of the exploding pinto. It happened before he became CEO.
If Chrysler purchased Ford tomorrow, should Jurgen E Schrempp be personally prosecuted, either criminally or civilly, for the exploding pinto's? Of course not, no sane human being would claim he should.
So why is it you seem to think that the CEO of Dow should be punished for an accident which occured before Dow purchased Union Carbide? I truly don't understand how he had any involvement whatsoever in the incident.
Yes, Dow did sign on for the liabilities of the former Union Carbide. But that does absolutely nothing for justifying why the CEO of Dow should be held personally responsible for the Union Carbide accident.
Re:Didja all catch...
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2, Interesting
1> Union Carbide plant suffers catastrophic incident, resulting in hundreds and thousands of injuries to employees and families.
2> Dow Chemical purchases Union Carbide plant.
3> Dow Chemical CEO should pe bunished for the accident.
What are you smoking to get that conclusion from the first two events?
Yes, its horrible that people were injured and died as a result of the industrial accident. Its pretty rotten to sue the victims and their families for disrupting work.
Its disturbing that idiots will personal harm to the officers and representatives of Dow for an accident which occured at a plant BEFORE THEY OWNED IT.
Even so, holding a CEO responsible for every occurance involving every job site is insane. In cases where the CEO had prior knowledge, sure, but making the assumption that every officer of every company knows every detail of business in a company employing tens of thousands worldwide is laughable.
It may look a lot nicer on your 5 o'clock news to see corporate officer Joe hauled away in handcuffs, but it doesn't satisfy justice pinning everything on just the officers. Justice is satisfied by the prosecution of the offenders. Those who commited crimes, or exercised -unreasonable- negligence.
Hard to identify alts? For players, maybe, but for the people who come in to settle disputes between people acting like 2 year olds, its only as difficult as the developers make it. Anyone who has given any thought to mmorpg's realizes the need to make available a list of characters associated with an address, credit card, and account.
Thats not to say that all support staff should see the address or credit card number, of course, but they should see the account name. So when Joe Blow complains that Jimmy has been harassing them, the support staff can note this of Jimmy, and attach this in such a way that its visible in a query of characters by address/credit card/account.
Now, for twinking I think you're burying your head in the sand. A LOT of the people that are into twinking can still do so by purchasing a second account. Multiple accounts is a COMMON thing in mmorpgs. Probably 1/3 of the people I play EQ with have 2 or more accounts. And limiting to one character per account per server does jack shit to stop twinking for this crowd.
If by unfair you mean jealous, you're right on the mark. I've played evercrack a fair bit, and I can say that the only people who I've come across that claimed that muling was unfair are the people who don't have the time or resources to do it themselves.
The average person sees no problem with storing 'extras' on another toon. In the defense of SWG, though, evercrack only allows one character on at a time. Your toon won't continue mining or any such thing while you're not playing. This pushes resource costs up for them, and also increases the poly count for some people in game (pushing their resource requirements up).
*shrug* I'd have more respect for them if they didn't try to cover their decision with fluff, but maybe I'm the only one that doesn't like being spoonfed bullshit.
There are a couple of problems with the cable operators just 'pulling the plug'. First, they run a risk of being sued for doing so. Despite the fact that there is a service contract in place, there is the very real risk of a law suit. A law suit that could cost them a lot more than 11,000$ for each of 23 subscribers.
Second, they put themselves in a less desirable position when it comes to a civil suit to recover the value of the stolen bandwidth. A criminal conviction can go a long way in lending credibility to their position.
Even if it was in their best interests to pull the plug, these people still commited crimes. Because of the nature of internet connections, this could very easily be an interstate crime. In this case, of course the FBI should be involved.
And what the blue fuck does the constitution have to do with it? Did the government author the service contract the thieves violated? Is the cable company a government agency? Companies and private citizens aren't bound to constitution.
Oh, poor consumers. Excuse me if my heart doesn't bleed for their plight. They stole, they got caught, they got arrested. The system worked here.
The problem with 'they' just moving in and removing the monopoly is that the infrastructure costs are so high as to prevent a company from getting a return on their investment anytime in the forseeable future. You can blame the current bandwidth providers all you like, but the 'they' thats supposed to come along and save you are the ones to blame.
Its not cheap running fibre, or new cable, or new copper all over the country, up and down every block. Not only is it not cheap, but getting permission to run new lines through peoples lawns, back yards, alleys and whatnot is not an insignificant hurdle.
Maybe its just me, but I think that forcing companies that -did- shell out the bucks for infrastructure to share with every Tom Dick and Harry is a pretty lame solution. Most other areas of the economy a company gets to benefit from their cost outlays, why shouldn't telecomms?
Slashdot Mirror
Free market.
Capitalism precludes only -regulated- monopolies, that is, monopolies which exist only because of government intervention. That there are markets with prohibitively high costs of entry and difficulties with increasing market penetration is an unavoidable occurance in capitalist society. Consumer protection legislation is, for the most part, contrary to the core of capitalism as are intellectual property laws. Both seem to be required, though, to keep the capitalist-ish societies functioning smoothly.Same with several centers in Saskatchewan (a province in Canada.) My parents have had it since it was rolled out in the town of 30,000 they live in. It goes down periodically, sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours or days.
I'm doing nothing of the sort. The RIAA breaking the law (and lobbying for laws to protect their copyrights) doesn't in any way justify my unauthorized use of their intangible property. There isn't any fundamental right being infringed, so calling it civil disobedience doesn't really fly either (at least with respect to "new" music).
You may have a case that works entering the public domain is a fundamental right of society. I don't agree, but that's an entirely separate issue.
This is going to come off as flamebait, but that logic taken to absurdity boils down to: rape victims shouldn't file civil suits against rapists that couldn't afford hookers, or that victims of carjacking shouldn't file suit against those who carjack them, because the carjacker couldn't afford their car.
Even if it was specifically targeting people who couldn't afford cds, they are noncustomers benefiting (arguably with most major label crap) from copyrighted works without paying. Lower prices don't necessarily imply that violators will purchase enough to achieve higher profit for the recording industry either. There are goods, and major label crap is one of them, which consumers will not purchase at any price. They may, however, consume them at no cost. The common response that someone who wouldn't have paid anyway should be allowed to violate copyrights is ridiculous. If that were the case, even people who are willing to pay $15 (or whatever) for a CD have little, if any, reason to pay.
Under current law, they're going at it exactly the right way - filing against flagrant violators of their copyrights.
If you use unambiguous prefixes, like the IEC has defined, 2^64 is 16 exbibytes. Which happens to be (roughly) 18 billion gigabytes, or 18 exabytes. I'm not sure why everyone insists on confusing the matter by using base 10 prefixes when there are base 2 prefixes available that are unambiguous.
Examining each individual that might be the case, however when looking at the whole situation you yourself admit that their claim is occasionally true. If it is true for one indivudal, then piracy and other IP rights infringement has deprived the copyright holder of the value of whatever it is that was copied. It only takes one case for their claim to be true.
The potential customer did deal with them, if only indirectly. The potential customer made use of their widget, whatever that tangible or intangible widget might be.
Leaving that aside, in a free market system there isn't legislated consumer protection with respect to purchase agreements. In your free market, the seller is free to apply whatever condition of sale they wish, including restricting what you can do with the widget, and specifying their terms of your redistribution, repackaging, and licensing the widget to others. Like it or not, a free market isn't a utopia for the little guy.
If the public decides it can share copies of whatever widget, and the "right" of the public to share copies is legislated, then widgetmakers to sell widgets on their terms are infringed. Imposing conditions on sale of tangible goods/service and on sale of intangible goods/service should be the right of the buyer AND seller, at least in a free market it should. So can the business cry foul because a potential customer chooses other means for getting the product? In a free market, if the initial sale included conditions about reselling, redistributing, sublicensing, or giving away then absolutely the can.
The current copyright system blows, but would you rather there be a a different sales contract for everything you buy? Not me. I'd rather there be legislated consumer and producer protection with respect to intellectual property.
Point 2.
The question isn't whether or not you can download music you want, its whether or not you can upload music you want. You are only legally permitted to share an original, licensed media. In the case of CD's, you are allowed only to share the original CD. You are not, however, to share copies of the original CD.
Point 3.
According to http://www.oia.ucalgary.ca/cpi/tables/Canada.pdf , you're looking at paying about 1.63 times the nominal price of a CD than you paid in 1985. That $20 CD in 1985 would cost you $32.60 now, instead it costs $15-$20, or roughly 1/2 what it did then.
Last Point.
The last time the music industry shut down napster, there were other economic forces at work which contribute to the drop in music sales.
Don't get me wrong, I think there are better ways for the RIAA and equivalent organizations to earn more money.
If you look at the responses that've been modded up, you'll see that there are a lot of people claiming all they want is a phone, "and ..."
This is why more and more phones are having more and more features. One phone that has an address book, camera, games, or whatever else is going to have a lower unit cost from having to produce and carry one phone for each subset of features. And when carriers charge for ability to use features on their network, they can get more subscribers to these pay features (even if they don't get used) because its just a couple bucks a month, and the phone can do it anyway.
Of course I'm not comparing computer crime to other crimes which are more personally intrusive. They are only related insofar as they're immoral acts on the part of the perpetrator.
However in those cases the victim is critical in determining sentencing. You can't have a consistent code if you apply an "equal sentencing for all victims" to some crimes and not others.
That said though, you still aren't "calling for it" by leaving your door unlocked. Its still entirely the fault of the thief. I have no legal or moral obligation to secure every aspect of my life against providing opportunities for the morally bankrupt to act immorally.
The "fault" in leaving your car open is that you're not abiding by the terms of your insurance which require that you lock your car in order to qualify for reimbursement after a theft. You haven't held up your end of the deal, so they don't have to pay you. If you report the theft to the police they can still charge the thief.
By your reasoning shoplifting is the stores fault for not keeping the store locked. Stationary supply theft from offices by employees is the employers fault for not strip searching everyone as they leave the building every day. Rape is probably the victims fault for not being armed with an automatic weapon to thwart attackers. These are all obviously assurd, and believed only by those incapable of recognizing the moral responsibility of individuals.
In a nice rosey world it'd be nice to say that the role of the victim shouldn't be a factor for sentencing. I'd suggest that there are plenty of cases where the victim's identity is critical in sentencing. Violent crimes against children (being unable to adequately protect themselves) are generally harsher in the punishment of the criminal. Sexual harassment by employers is treated differently than sexual harassment outside of the workplace. Maybe they shouldn't be handled differently. Given that they are handled differently and most people find this acceptable, it would be inconsistent to say that the victim in thievery shouldn't matter whatsoever.
I'm not obligated to close my front door, and I have a reasonable expectation that law abiding folk won't come in uninvited. Why should a wireless access point be any different?
There is no legitimate reason to use someone else's internet connection without their permission or knowledge. I'm not entitled to your resources, you're not entitled to mine. These are pretty simple, straightforward concepts which reasonable and courteous people respect and to which these people abide.
They shouldn't have to put a flag saying 'Do Not Enter' for the same reason I don't have a flag saying 'Do Not Enter' on the gate to my back yard, on either garage door, or on either entrance to the house. These are my resources, and decent law-abiding folks don't try to enter without my permission.
A closer analogy might be a parking stall at an office building. I generally assume that off-street parking is private, unless otherwise marked. So sure, I could probably use that off-street parking if I wanted to, and maybe nobody would notice or mind, but that doesn't make it right for me to do so. Likewise, if I connect to a wireless access point, unless I know that I have permission to do so, I don't. I probably could, and I might not get caught using their resources, but that doesn't make it right.
In your case, your laptop being configured to automatically connect to any base station upon waking or boot is your problem, not H*neywell's. Your configuration options represent your decision to use resources whether or not you have permission.
In the case of consulting or contracting, you and your employer are responsible for negotiating what resources you should have access to, and how those resources may be used. In the case of an office building, for a laptop user, this should cover wireless usage. Since you 'stumbled upon' H*neywell's network, and assumed that it was a resource of the company at which you were working, its obvious that you and your employer neglected to do this.
I'm more inclined to believe that although H*neywell should have taken better precautions, you (not them) are to blame for your intrusion into and use of their network.
To Sun, Linux is as much as a threat as Microsoft, and their strategy is the same: make the OS irrelevant by replacing it with a Sun-controlled platform that runs on top of the OS. The Linux community should be as paranoid about that occurring as Microsoft management is. Sun is, ultimately, not a friend of Linux.
Wouldn't that make Sun not a friend of "open source and open standards with respect to Linx", rather than not a friend of Linux? Not everyone involved with linux cares if whats done on top of linux is "open".
But with a few tweaks?
The pci and rambus busses don't need to keep up. The peak throughput only needs to be serviced within the scsi chain. Buffering on the scsi adapter could deliver a relatively high sustained transfer rate from the scsi chain to the pci bus, within pci limitations.
It may be that some people are drawn to the anonimity of the internet, but that doesn't make it 'right'. Why should you be entitled to a medium free of responsibility and accountability that extends beyond the bounds of your legal rights and freedoms in the 'real' world? I guess its fashionable to claim that you're entitled to complete privacy, anonimity and absolution of accepting the consequences of your decisions.
The other thing to note is that this was near on 15 years ago. The internet was a MUCH different place then. This sort of thinking was common. Commercial participation in many net communities amounted to intrusion. The many 'anonymous' activities currently available had yet to be conceived.
It really wouldn't be so terrible for a network to exist now, that had some of the constraints of the internet back in the day. Thats not to say the current net should just go away, but some of us wouldn't mind the 'old days' all that much.
I often question if 'stealing' satellite signals really should be illegal. Those signals are there for the taking and the strength of the signal varies in no measurable way if more dishes recieve it..
/., but until these satellite services keep their shit off my roof I have no sympathy for them. Its hardly my fault their model is distributed for anyone to use.
Satellite companies make no effort at all to prevent their signals from being available to non-subscribers. The entire model is based on the fact that the signal IS available to everyone in a particular geographic region.
If I am able to decrypt these signals with a device of my own design, I should be able to do so. If I can convince my neighbor that my device is worth 3 easy payments of $49.95, that too should be well within my rights.
I don't see my local water company complaining about people stealing rainwater or water upstream from their intake. I've yet to see GE up in arms about anyone stealing the light from their lightbulbs to grow pot in the basement.
Monsanto tried to complain about people 'stealing' their precious crop secrets when nearby crops showed the same genetic traits. It was determined that Monsanto had no recourse. Why? Because their 'secret' product wasn't prevented from spreading to nearby crops. Satellite signals are also not prevented from spreading to non-subscribing dishes.
*shrug* I'm willing to accept a lot more than some of the tin-foil hat crowd on
This is the same moronic argument rapists used to use in court. 'She was dressed provacatively.' 'She didn't fight back, she must have wanted it.'
It didn't wash for them, it shouldn't wash for punks that feel compelled to commit computer crimes.
So by your thinking then any industrial accident would result in that company never being sold again? Who would purchase a company if doing so meant that it was legally their fault the accident happened in the first place? And would these companies never again have a CEO? Of course not, thats just plain stupid.
If Joe Blow became the CEO of Ford tomorrow, would that mean that he should be prosecuted for exploding pinto's? Of course not, thats fucking ridiculus. Joe blow had nothing to do with any phase of the exploding pinto. It happened before he became CEO.
If Chrysler purchased Ford tomorrow, should Jurgen E Schrempp be personally prosecuted, either criminally or civilly, for the exploding pinto's? Of course not, no sane human being would claim he should.
So why is it you seem to think that the CEO of Dow should be punished for an accident which occured before Dow purchased Union Carbide? I truly don't understand how he had any involvement whatsoever in the incident.
Yes, Dow did sign on for the liabilities of the former Union Carbide. But that does absolutely nothing for justifying why the CEO of Dow should be held personally responsible for the Union Carbide accident.
1> Union Carbide plant suffers catastrophic incident, resulting in hundreds and thousands of injuries to employees and families.
2> Dow Chemical purchases Union Carbide plant.
3> Dow Chemical CEO should pe bunished for the accident.
What are you smoking to get that conclusion from the first two events?
Yes, its horrible that people were injured and died as a result of the industrial accident. Its pretty rotten to sue the victims and their families for disrupting work.
Its disturbing that idiots will personal harm to the officers and representatives of Dow for an accident which occured at a plant BEFORE THEY OWNED IT.
Even so, holding a CEO responsible for every occurance involving every job site is insane. In cases where the CEO had prior knowledge, sure, but making the assumption that every officer of every company knows every detail of business in a company employing tens of thousands worldwide is laughable.
It may look a lot nicer on your 5 o'clock news to see corporate officer Joe hauled away in handcuffs, but it doesn't satisfy justice pinning everything on just the officers. Justice is satisfied by the prosecution of the offenders. Those who commited crimes, or exercised -unreasonable- negligence.
Hard to identify alts? For players, maybe, but for the people who come in to settle disputes between people acting like 2 year olds, its only as difficult as the developers make it. Anyone who has given any thought to mmorpg's realizes the need to make available a list of characters associated with an address, credit card, and account.
Thats not to say that all support staff should see the address or credit card number, of course, but they should see the account name. So when Joe Blow complains that Jimmy has been harassing them, the support staff can note this of Jimmy, and attach this in such a way that its visible in a query of characters by address/credit card/account.
Now, for twinking I think you're burying your head in the sand. A LOT of the people that are into twinking can still do so by purchasing a second account. Multiple accounts is a COMMON thing in mmorpgs. Probably 1/3 of the people I play EQ with have 2 or more accounts. And limiting to one character per account per server does jack shit to stop twinking for this crowd.
If by unfair you mean jealous, you're right on the mark. I've played evercrack a fair bit, and I can say that the only people who I've come across that claimed that muling was unfair are the people who don't have the time or resources to do it themselves.
The average person sees no problem with storing 'extras' on another toon. In the defense of SWG, though, evercrack only allows one character on at a time. Your toon won't continue mining or any such thing while you're not playing. This pushes resource costs up for them, and also increases the poly count for some people in game (pushing their resource requirements up).
*shrug* I'd have more respect for them if they didn't try to cover their decision with fluff, but maybe I'm the only one that doesn't like being spoonfed bullshit.
There are a couple of problems with the cable operators just 'pulling the plug'. First, they run a risk of being sued for doing so. Despite the fact that there is a service contract in place, there is the very real risk of a law suit. A law suit that could cost them a lot more than 11,000$ for each of 23 subscribers.
Second, they put themselves in a less desirable position when it comes to a civil suit to recover the value of the stolen bandwidth. A criminal conviction can go a long way in lending credibility to their position.
Even if it was in their best interests to pull the plug, these people still commited crimes. Because of the nature of internet connections, this could very easily be an interstate crime. In this case, of course the FBI should be involved.
And what the blue fuck does the constitution have to do with it? Did the government author the service contract the thieves violated? Is the cable company a government agency? Companies and private citizens aren't bound to constitution.
Oh, poor consumers. Excuse me if my heart doesn't bleed for their plight. They stole, they got caught, they got arrested. The system worked here.
The problem with 'they' just moving in and removing the monopoly is that the infrastructure costs are so high as to prevent a company from getting a return on their investment anytime in the forseeable future. You can blame the current bandwidth providers all you like, but the 'they' thats supposed to come along and save you are the ones to blame.
Its not cheap running fibre, or new cable, or new copper all over the country, up and down every block. Not only is it not cheap, but getting permission to run new lines through peoples lawns, back yards, alleys and whatnot is not an insignificant hurdle.
Maybe its just me, but I think that forcing companies that -did- shell out the bucks for infrastructure to share with every Tom Dick and Harry is a pretty lame solution. Most other areas of the economy a company gets to benefit from their cost outlays, why shouldn't telecomms?