Year-End Loss: Piracy is to blame. It's not our fault. Year-End Profit: We had great artists/writers/engineers that made some great products. Not Enough Bandwidth: Piracy is taking up all the bandwidth. It's not our fault. Excess Bandwidth: We have a better system than the 'other'guys. We're better ISP. Low Box Office Turnout: People are pirating movies instead of going to the theater. It's not our fault. High Box Office Turnout: We made really great movies. Low Record Sales: People are pirating all their music instead of buying it. It's not our fault. High Record Sales: We have great artists who produced great songs.
Anybody see a pattern here? Whenever the MPAA/RIAA or ISP's have problems, they blame pirates for "taking away" sales and clogging networks. The MPAA and RIAA don't realize that if they continue to pump out crappy content (films/music), then people are going to want to make sure thay what they are going to spend $25 on is worth it (would you buy a song or movie without listening or viewing it first? A 30 second preview isn't enough.). The MPAA/RIAA doesn't understand that people are pirating because the industries are prducing horrible music albums and over-hyped movies that nobody feels is worth their hard-earned money. Every film t hat comes out of Hollywood is over-hyped and inflated, so there is no way to tell a great film from a bad one. Record labels use the trick of putting 2 or 3 good songs out of 10-12 tracks on an album, and then charging $25 for the whole thing. If you produce crappy content, people are going to do what they can to make it better, or at least save themselves from being duped by record labels and film studios. ISP's have a similar reaction: Comcast blames p2p file sharing ("pirating" in Comcast's eyes) as the reason that it's service is horrible, rather than acknowledge that it spends way to much on advertising for customers that it already doen't have the bandwidth or infrastructure to support.
Whenever these guys have problems, they shift blame to other people, namely, "pirates". BUT, when they have a windfall, they are pretty damn quick to shift the attention towards themselves.
Basically:
Successes: We're just simply a company of experts who know what we're doing! Problems: It's your fault, not ours.
The problem isn't only limited to these groups, but can be seen in other companies that don't understand how to run a business:
MAINTAIN your infrastructure. If you lose it, you have nothing. INFRASTRUCTURE is everything. If it suffers, your customers suffer, and ultimately, you will suffer the most. (Just look at AOL.....) DO remember that your customers chose you. You didn't choose them. DO keep your customers happy. DO provide good service. DO give the customer what they want. If you do, they will give you money in return. DO remember people want a product, not more advertisements. (AOL again.....) DON'T spend more than you make. DON'T advertise things you can't deliver. DON'T try to pull a fast one by your customers. You will always lose. DON'T overvalue your product. (AOL again.....) DON'T treat the customer like an ATM. It pisses them off. Word-Of-Mouth is the best and most effective way to get a new customer. A happy customer is far more likely to convince a friend to buy from you than your commercial is. Money from a customer is good, but get greedy and it will disappear.
And lastly:
DO remember that your competitors would be more than happy to buy your company from your creditors if you ever went belly-up.
The downside of not having those "manual" systems is that the user, no matter how well-versed they are, cannot adjust the system to do what tey want.
Yes, your analogy is very valid for the Average Joe in terms of cars, but when a real user needs to make there car or truck do more, they have no way of doing it. If I want to give my truck more gear ratios for better mileage, I just slap on an over/under drive. Plus, automatic isn't always better, such as is the case with four-wheel-drive.
The very real, AND HORRIBLE, downside of automatic systems in cars is that when one control "module" fails or goes out of range, the whole system, or part of the system, will usually shut down or become unavailable.
Prime example: Electronic steering. When the steering control module or fuse fails, there is no movement of the fromt wheels. Manual steering does not have this problem, and "power assisted" steering will still work, albeit a little harder, even with the engine dead. Plus, both manual and assisted steering will still work even if the system is shorted, as they still use manual input instead of electronic input. Also, control modules are usually hideously expensive, and require special installation procedures. Increasingly, it is possible for a module to short-circuit, not only destroying itself, but other modules nearby (a control module in my 1997 Ford Explorer shorted and destroyed itself and two other modules nearby. $600 per module!). Jump-starting a car with a dead battery can also destroy modules. Modiules also will not tolerate the extremes mechanical parts can. Too much heat on an intergrated ignition coil will make the coil fail in no time. An alternator will continue to run. Too much voltage through a steering module will fry it, causing loss of steering ability, instead of a blown fuse and stiffer steering.
Manually adjusted controls will give a faster response and last longer, but require the user pay more attention to preventive maintenance. That is something almost no car owner has the patience for. Automatic parts don't last as long, and give slower responce due to the need for the input to be processed by the ECU, but require no preventive maintenance or care. With mechanical parts, parts can be swapped in or out as the job requires (one aftermarket part will almost always span the entire spectrum of potential applications), whereas electronic parts require reprogramming by a technician, or replacement if the part cannot handle the specifications required. A power surge in an "automatic" car will usually be a death knell for any electronics indides, whereas in a "manual" car, you'll need to just replace a fuse. Plus, electronic throttles, now seemingly the standard, give POSITIVELY CRAPPY control over engine speed. Couple an electronic throttle with an automatic transmission and an experienced user will be fighting to keep the engine at one speed and the transmission from jumping into different gears. Plus when an auto trans jumps into a higher gear, especially on an inclune, engine RPMs will rocket up and possibly damage the engine. The operator then takes his foot off the throttle to reduce RPMs, making the trans shift back down into gear, but losing road speed. It's a giant headache.
So, automatic isn't necessarily better. It's just easier and cheaper..... unless you know what you are doing. Then it's a pain in the ass.
This idea is simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Since a relatively few internet users are cybercriminals, it make no sense to spy on EVERYONE as if they were cybercriminals.
Instead of punishing every internet user by puttign them under continuous scrutiny, why not punish the criminals themselves by making the penalties far more threatening: 25 years hard labor, no parole or probation.
I mean, think about it: Make cybercriminals work for 14 hours a day in the fields (hand tools only).....for 25 years. The prospect of spending 25 years of pulling weeds, picking cotton in the south, shoveling snow in Siberia, or breaking rocks with a small hammer in the middle of Utah would scare the shit out of anyone running scams, spamming, stealing data, or running botnets.
Evans spammers Ralsky and Catts openly admitted that they would keep on spamming no matter what.
Bottom line, get caught and:
MANDATORY Full restitution. (You got paid, now its time for your victims to get paid back.)
MANDATORY Fine amounting to %50 of total worth/value. (Not exactly a parking ticket. All of it goes to schools)
MANDATORY 25 years hard labor. $0.01 per year payment. (Giving them 3 years in an air conditioned building won't make the message stick)
MANDATORY Complete asset forfeiture/seizure (Anything in your possesion, being controlled by you, or with your name on it. Goes to paying for your expenses. Anything remaining when you are discharged goes to schools).
MANDATORY residence in an outdoor prison camp. (24/7, like the one in Arizona or New Mexico)
NO Parole. (You're in for the whole trip)
NO Probation. (You screw up, you're screwed)
NO Visitation. (You are NOT on vacation)
NO "Special Needs" segregation. (You will all be treated equally)
NO Mail. (except legal documents).
NO Motorized/mechanized tools, only hand tools. (You didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you?)
NO Luxuries (heating/air conditioning, T.V., radios, rec yards). (If there are law abiding citizens that can't afford this, then you can't either)
ALL medical/legal/incarceration expenses are paid for by your seized assets. When your money runs out, so does your medical care. If you die in custody, you cannot will any of your assests; The Government gets it all and it ALL goes to schools (NO reappropriation). (Hey, there are law abiding people who don't even HAVE medical care. If you get sick you pay for it just like everybody else.)
NON-U.S. born citizens have ther citizenship permanently revoked, deported to wherever they came from, and banned from ever reentering the U.S. (We didn't let you become a citizen just to screw everyone else over. You blew your chance.)
Same meal served 3 times a day, 7 days a week: Governemnt Cheese, water, fortified bread. (There are law abiding people who are starving, so you shouldn't complain)
Work from 1 hour before sunup to 1 hour after sundown (Crime sucks, doesn't it?)
The only possesions inmantes are allowed to have are blankets, pillow, basic toiletries, and a thin mattress. (Prison is not your home. The lights go out when the sun goes down)
If this was applied to criminals inside the U.S., nobody would think about getting caught running a botnet or SPAM server in the U.S. (or commiting any other serious felony) Plus, if someone is caught outside the U.S., have them extradited and put to work here. Even more, other countries might implement it as a way to make the punishment the same everywhere, making it too risky and too expensive to run such cybercrime operations.
The problem with the prison system is not that sentance are too long, it's that prison isn't as terrifying enough a place to make it a good deterrent and get the message to stick. Prisoners are property of the State until their sentence is done. Period. If you don't like it, then you should have thought about that BEFORE you decided to break the law.
It's high time to punish the people who break the law, and stop punishing the people who don't. I'm not a criminal so stop treating me like one. Put a prisons' worth of inmates to work on farms, open pit strip mines, and quarries and you could cut out the need for all the fuel-guzzling heavy equipment.
Congress don't listen to common sense, they DO listen to voters. They don't listen to voters, either. They only listen to lobbyists and anyone else who gives them lots of money.
What's the benefit? If Wikileaks did have their servers in a decomissioned nuclear bunker, then the government would have a list of possible locations that it would be in the for of a list of decommisioned bunkers. If the founders were as smart as they claim to be, they would hide it in plain sight. I mean, what wold seem like a more probable place to hide a "hot-button" web site that strives to make life difficult for Big Brother?
Location A: Decommissioned nuclear bunker.
Location B: Decommissioned Atlas missile silo.
Location C: Underneath a chicken coop in rural Oklahoma?
I didn't know that it was legal for a company to control the private lives of it's employees. I know it had been done, but to force someone to allow a company to control part of their private lives as a condition of work seems illegal.
Had the guy been someone who builds cruise missiles, rockets, and fighter jets, then yes, their is some legitimacy to the companies' need for that clause. But, he was a T.V. show producer, NOT a weapons engineer.
Occupations that don't deal with the levels of national security that weapons engineers do, should not be allowed to have such overly controlling employment clauses.
Image #2 (the "crater) looks like anything but a precisely crafted crater. It just looks like a hole that was burned into the substrate. Everything else though is pretty neat.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.... WELCOME TO THE MAIN EVENT!
In this corner, with combined revenue of over 220 billion.....CELL PHONE MANUFACTURERS! In the other corner, already salivating like half-starved rabid dogs, PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS!
"LETS GET READY TO RRRUUUMMMBLLLE!
(CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!)
(sounds of lawyers shuffling papers and shouting as lawyers demand settlements)
Yes. It's called a shotgun. The double-barreled kind works particularly well, especially when the person holding it gives the appearance of being deeply disturbed and/or drunk. It will repel just about anyone and anything, except Police. It tends to attract them like flies to manure.
This reminds me of the stories of "Border Blasters" (stations just inside Mexico) that used to crank out signals (usually directional) aimed at the United States. This was also a popular thing to do in Europe too.
Every time I read a story about people implating RFID tags into themselves as a means of "keyless entry", it always reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes pulls out the warden's eyball so he can get past the retinal scanner in the Cryoprison.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is how the MPAA / RIAA / ISP logic works:
Year-End Loss: Piracy is to blame. It's not our fault.
Year-End Profit: We had great artists/writers/engineers that made some great products.
Not Enough Bandwidth: Piracy is taking up all the bandwidth. It's not our fault.
Excess Bandwidth: We have a better system than the 'other'guys. We're better ISP.
Low Box Office Turnout: People are pirating movies instead of going to the theater. It's not our fault.
High Box Office Turnout: We made really great movies.
Low Record Sales: People are pirating all their music instead of buying it. It's not our fault.
High Record Sales: We have great artists who produced great songs.
Anybody see a pattern here? Whenever the MPAA/RIAA or ISP's have problems, they blame pirates for "taking away" sales and clogging networks. The MPAA and RIAA don't realize that if they continue to pump out crappy content (films/music), then people are going to want to make sure thay what they are going to spend $25 on is worth it (would you buy a song or movie without listening or viewing it first? A 30 second preview isn't enough.). The MPAA/RIAA doesn't understand that people are pirating because the industries are prducing horrible music albums and over-hyped movies that nobody feels is worth their hard-earned money. Every film t hat comes out of Hollywood is over-hyped and inflated, so there is no way to tell a great film from a bad one. Record labels use the trick of putting 2 or 3 good songs out of 10-12 tracks on an album, and then charging $25 for the whole thing. If you produce crappy content, people are going to do what they can to make it better, or at least save themselves from being duped by record labels and film studios. ISP's have a similar reaction: Comcast blames p2p file sharing ("pirating" in Comcast's eyes) as the reason that it's service is horrible, rather than acknowledge that it spends way to much on advertising for customers that it already doen't have the bandwidth or infrastructure to support.
Whenever these guys have problems, they shift blame to other people, namely, "pirates". BUT, when they have a windfall, they are pretty damn quick to shift the attention towards themselves.
Basically:
Successes: We're just simply a company of experts who know what we're doing!
Problems: It's your fault, not ours.
The problem isn't only limited to these groups, but can be seen in other companies that don't understand how to run a business:
MAINTAIN your infrastructure. If you lose it, you have nothing.
INFRASTRUCTURE is everything. If it suffers, your customers suffer, and ultimately, you will suffer the most. (Just look at AOL.....)
DO remember that your customers chose you. You didn't choose them.
DO keep your customers happy.
DO provide good service.
DO give the customer what they want. If you do, they will give you money in return.
DO remember people want a product, not more advertisements. (AOL again.....)
DON'T spend more than you make.
DON'T advertise things you can't deliver.
DON'T try to pull a fast one by your customers. You will always lose.
DON'T overvalue your product. (AOL again.....)
DON'T treat the customer like an ATM. It pisses them off.
Word-Of-Mouth is the best and most effective way to get a new customer.
A happy customer is far more likely to convince a friend to buy from you than your commercial is.
Money from a customer is good, but get greedy and it will disappear.
And lastly:
DO remember that your competitors would be more than happy to buy your company from your creditors if you ever went belly-up.
These could come in handy..... Helping me remember who that chick that I keep waking up next to is.
Call me when the start selling REAL Robot Milk a.k.a. Olde Fortran Malt Liquor
The downside of not having those "manual" systems is that the user, no matter how well-versed they are, cannot adjust the system to do what tey want.
Yes, your analogy is very valid for the Average Joe in terms of cars, but when a real user needs to make there car or truck do more, they have no way of doing it. If I want to give my truck more gear ratios for better mileage, I just slap on an over/under drive. Plus, automatic isn't always better, such as is the case with four-wheel-drive.
The very real, AND HORRIBLE, downside of automatic systems in cars is that when one control "module" fails or goes out of range, the whole system, or part of the system, will usually shut down or become unavailable.
Prime example: Electronic steering. When the steering control module or fuse fails, there is no movement of the fromt wheels. Manual steering does not have this problem, and "power assisted" steering will still work, albeit a little harder, even with the engine dead. Plus, both manual and assisted steering will still work even if the system is shorted, as they still use manual input instead of electronic input. Also, control modules are usually hideously expensive, and require special installation procedures. Increasingly, it is possible for a module to short-circuit, not only destroying itself, but other modules nearby (a control module in my 1997 Ford Explorer shorted and destroyed itself and two other modules nearby. $600 per module!). Jump-starting a car with a dead battery can also destroy modules. Modiules also will not tolerate the extremes mechanical parts can. Too much heat on an intergrated ignition coil will make the coil fail in no time. An alternator will continue to run. Too much voltage through a steering module will fry it, causing loss of steering ability, instead of a blown fuse and stiffer steering.
Manually adjusted controls will give a faster response and last longer, but require the user pay more attention to preventive maintenance. That is something almost no car owner has the patience for. Automatic parts don't last as long, and give slower responce due to the need for the input to be processed by the ECU, but require no preventive maintenance or care. With mechanical parts, parts can be swapped in or out as the job requires (one aftermarket part will almost always span the entire spectrum of potential applications), whereas electronic parts require reprogramming by a technician, or replacement if the part cannot handle the specifications required. A power surge in an "automatic" car will usually be a death knell for any electronics indides, whereas in a "manual" car, you'll need to just replace a fuse. Plus, electronic throttles, now seemingly the standard, give POSITIVELY CRAPPY control over engine speed. Couple an electronic throttle with an automatic transmission and an experienced user will be fighting to keep the engine at one speed and the transmission from jumping into different gears. Plus when an auto trans jumps into a higher gear, especially on an inclune, engine RPMs will rocket up and possibly damage the engine. The operator then takes his foot off the throttle to reduce RPMs, making the trans shift back down into gear, but losing road speed. It's a giant headache.
So, automatic isn't necessarily better. It's just easier and cheaper..... unless you know what you are doing. Then it's a pain in the ass.
Just one step closer to Virtual Sex.
Geeks.....REJOICE!
This idea is simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Since a relatively few internet users are cybercriminals, it make no sense to spy on EVERYONE as if they were cybercriminals.
Instead of punishing every internet user by puttign them under continuous scrutiny, why not punish the criminals themselves by making the penalties far more threatening: 25 years hard labor, no parole or probation.
I mean, think about it: Make cybercriminals work for 14 hours a day in the fields (hand tools only).....for 25 years. The prospect of spending 25 years of pulling weeds, picking cotton in the south, shoveling snow in Siberia, or breaking rocks with a small hammer in the middle of Utah would scare the shit out of anyone running scams, spamming, stealing data, or running botnets.
Evans spammers Ralsky and Catts openly admitted that they would keep on spamming no matter what.
Bottom line, get caught and:
MANDATORY Full restitution. (You got paid, now its time for your victims to get paid back.)
MANDATORY Fine amounting to %50 of total worth/value. (Not exactly a parking ticket. All of it goes to schools)
MANDATORY 25 years hard labor. $0.01 per year payment. (Giving them 3 years in an air conditioned building won't make the message stick)
MANDATORY Complete asset forfeiture/seizure (Anything in your possesion, being controlled by you, or with your name on it. Goes to paying for your expenses. Anything remaining when you are discharged goes to schools).
MANDATORY residence in an outdoor prison camp. (24/7, like the one in Arizona or New Mexico)
NO Parole. (You're in for the whole trip)
NO Probation. (You screw up, you're screwed)
NO Visitation. (You are NOT on vacation)
NO "Special Needs" segregation. (You will all be treated equally)
NO Mail. (except legal documents).
NO Motorized/mechanized tools, only hand tools. (You didn't think we'd make it that easy, did you?)
NO Luxuries (heating/air conditioning, T.V., radios, rec yards). (If there are law abiding citizens that can't afford this, then you can't either)
ALL medical/legal/incarceration expenses are paid for by your seized assets. When your money runs out, so does your medical care. If you die in custody, you cannot will any of your assests; The Government gets it all and it ALL goes to schools (NO reappropriation). (Hey, there are law abiding people who don't even HAVE medical care. If you get sick you pay for it just like everybody else.)
NON-U.S. born citizens have ther citizenship permanently revoked, deported to wherever they came from, and banned from ever reentering the U.S. (We didn't let you become a citizen just to screw everyone else over. You blew your chance.)
Same meal served 3 times a day, 7 days a week: Governemnt Cheese, water, fortified bread. (There are law abiding people who are starving, so you shouldn't complain)
Work from 1 hour before sunup to 1 hour after sundown (Crime sucks, doesn't it?)
The only possesions inmantes are allowed to have are blankets, pillow, basic toiletries, and a thin mattress. (Prison is not your home. The lights go out when the sun goes down)
If this was applied to criminals inside the U.S., nobody would think about getting caught running a botnet or SPAM server in the U.S. (or commiting any other serious felony) Plus, if someone is caught outside the U.S., have them extradited and put to work here. Even more, other countries might implement it as a way to make the punishment the same everywhere, making it too risky and too expensive to run such cybercrime operations.
The problem with the prison system is not that sentance are too long, it's that prison isn't as terrifying enough a place to make it a good deterrent and get the message to stick. Prisoners are property of the State until their sentence is done. Period. If you don't like it, then you should have thought about that BEFORE you decided to break the law.
It's high time to punish the people who break the law, and stop punishing the people who don't. I'm not a criminal so stop treating me like one. Put a prisons' worth of inmates to work on farms, open pit strip mines, and quarries and you could cut out the need for all the fuel-guzzling heavy equipment.
I wonder how much of the backlog is frivolous patents, like IBM's recent applications, and that one involving gift cards.
How in the Hell is this NEWS?! Astronomers have known about this for DECADES!
What's next? An article telling us gasoline is flammable?
Somebody please tag this noshitsherlock.
If only Monica Lewinsky had a dress made from this self-cleaning fabric.....
If this works, every geek who gets busted for trying to get some action from hookers will be using it.
.....and now the:
So far, we have the:
Twinkie Defense
Peer Pressure Defense
"God-Told-Me-To-Do-It" Defense
"I'm-A-Geek" Defense.
What's the benefit? If Wikileaks did have their servers in a decomissioned nuclear bunker, then the government would have a list of possible locations that it would be in the for of a list of decommisioned bunkers. If the founders were as smart as they claim to be, they would hide it in plain sight. I mean, what wold seem like a more probable place to hide a "hot-button" web site that strives to make life difficult for Big Brother?
Location A: Decommissioned nuclear bunker.
Location B: Decommissioned Atlas missile silo.
Location C: Underneath a chicken coop in rural Oklahoma?
I'm waiting to see bras that say:
Warning/Danger: May be habit forming. Not for use by persons under the age of 18.
I didn't know that it was legal for a company to control the private lives of it's employees. I know it had been done, but to force someone to allow a company to control part of their private lives as a condition of work seems illegal.
Had the guy been someone who builds cruise missiles, rockets, and fighter jets, then yes, their is some legitimacy to the companies' need for that clause. But, he was a T.V. show producer, NOT a weapons engineer.
Occupations that don't deal with the levels of national security that weapons engineers do, should not be allowed to have such overly controlling employment clauses.
I'll bet the idea for this came out of NASA's latest booze-fueled Christmas Party:
"Screw this! I'm gonna build my own Lunar Cell Phone Network! With blackjack and hookers! You know what?...Forget the cellphone network!"
Isn't the A-ring what surrounds the A-hole?
Artificial Intelligence will reach a human level by 2029?
Will this take AI into the realm of cigar smoking, whore mongering, compulsive gambling, kleptomaniacal robots?
Me thinks Bender isn't that far away.....
Image #2 (the "crater) looks like anything but a precisely crafted crater. It just looks like a hole that was burned into the substrate. Everything else though is pretty neat.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.... WELCOME TO THE MAIN EVENT!
In this corner, with combined revenue of over 220 billion.....CELL PHONE MANUFACTURERS! In the other corner, already salivating like half-starved rabid dogs, PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS!
"LETS GET READY TO RRRUUUMMMBLLLE!
(CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!)
(sounds of lawyers shuffling papers and shouting as lawyers demand settlements)
Yes. It's called a shotgun. The double-barreled kind works particularly well, especially when the person holding it gives the appearance of being deeply disturbed and/or drunk. It will repel just about anyone and anything, except Police. It tends to attract them like flies to manure.
Maybe Scientology will ask if Xenu's Galactic Confederacy can shoot it down with their DC-9's.....
This reminds me of the stories of "Border Blasters" (stations just inside Mexico) that used to crank out signals (usually directional) aimed at the United States. This was also a popular thing to do in Europe too.
Every time I read a story about people implating RFID tags into themselves as a means of "keyless entry", it always reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes pulls out the warden's eyball so he can get past the retinal scanner in the Cryoprison.
I'll bet the light their shining on Adavnced Lighting Research comes from a big pile of $21M that they set on fire.
Plus, what use is it if the results of Federally-funded research and development end up being used and patented by private companies?