First off: You didn't mention Columbine once, Katz. Good for you.:)
I was thinking the same thing, except I was looking for a different key phrase. I was getting excited until I read in the fourth-last paragraph: In the Corporate Republic...
I got karma to burn, so I'm not afraid to go -1 offtopic....
It was a pretty good original post. But the downside is that the record companies and artists wouldn't make as much money as they normally do now (unless of course someone wants to buy the song at a few million).
I also must agree about the moderation. There's no way to stop it. Most people moderate only new articles, and then only moderate other posts that have been moderated up (me-too syndrome).
today's hottest item is Linux, which is a version of Unix, which was new in 1976.
Just because the roots of an operating system is old, doesn't mean it's obsolete. For example, Windows 98 is a version of CP/M, which was new in 1974. If someone was going to try and say that just because Win98 is based on an OS that is 26 years old is out of date, they should be dragged into the street and shot. The same goes for Mr. Gelernter's quote above.
A female graduate student had the following experience:
[A professor] in the introductory part of a guest lecture on robotics to the graduate core AI class: (approximate quote) `Pretty soon we'll have robots that are sophisticated enough to wander around in shopping malls and pick up girls.' I didn't listen to the rest of the lecture, so I don't know what else he had to say.
I read some of the article, and came to the part on sexism. Above is one of the examples of the fierce sexism in CS (the others are pretty nasty, but I've never seen anything close to them). I have read the above example numerous times but fail to find anything demeaning towards women in it. If anything, it is a joke about simplistic male minds.
I get your pardon, INTENT is what I meant. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
if anything they'd post false mp3 links to get traffic. I doubt the post mp3 links to deliberately violate copyright laws.
From what I read, the site doesn't post false mp3 links to get traffic. They're checking the sites to see if they contain mp3s, then making links to them. They are DELIBERATELY making links to illegal MP3s. There is only one intent to making a link: Having someone follow it.
Consider the case of a newspaper reporting that there are lots of prostitutes frequenting a particular neighbourhood in the city. Are they then guilty of pimping?
Good point. I did forget to mention about intent in that post. However, I did not forget to mention it in one of my other replies.
Moral of the story: If you know what you're doing is bad, don't do it. It's probably illegal, and if isn't it probably will be Very Soon Now. Use common sense.
Copyright infringement is illegal. That means outright stealing. Pointing fingers may be impolite but it is clearly not stealing. Nor is linking.
Three words: Aiding and abetting.
Finally, unless you can offer a suggestion to prevent abuse given you're so inclined to argue against other supposed abuses please don't waste people's time guess-legislating.
Either you're missing punctuation marks, or your sentence structure is bad. Can you say it again?
That makes no sense. If linking in itself is harmless then how can knowingly linking to an illegal site be any different.
Yes, linking in itself is harmless. Knowingly linking to an illegal site is different. To convict someone of a crime (at maximum penalty), you need to show two things: 1. The person did the crime, and 2. The person knew it was a crime. So knowing that what you are doing is bad is *very* relevant.
If I know of a place that makes moonshine and then tell people about it, does that make me an accessory?
If moonshine is illegal where you live, yes.
Next you're gonna tell me merely thinking of linking to a site is a crime.
Okay, now you're just trying to create a slippery slope. Using a fallacious argument is not proper.
If we're supposed to have free speech, why must there be so many restrictions?
There are restrictions to make sure you don't tread upon other people's rights. For instance, someone could stand up and start slandering political figures, then try and hide behind "free speech". Whose right is the greater? The slanderer to say whatever he wants, or the slanderee to have his good name protected from false claims?
Besides, you seem to have missed the point of my original post. Linking to an illegal site is synonymous with fencing stolen goods. If you know that what you're distributing is hot, then you're in the bad. And in this instance, the site doing the linking *knows* the MP3s are illegal. This has nothing to do with free speech.
Both sides are right. Linking in itself, is harmless. But when you *know* you're linking to a pirated MP3, and you check to make sure it really is, you're an accessory to piracy. The site that actually hosts the file should be shut down and punished harshly, while the site that linked to it (knowing that the site it linked to was illegal) should get a slap on the wrist.
It's my view that any langage based on the C syntax is not suitable for beginners.
It's not exactly the syntax of C that is difficult for beginners, moreso it is the low-levelishness of C that makes it hard to learn. Beginning programmers need to learn how to formulate a plan and write it out (make algorithms), they do not need to worry about shooting themselves in the <insert body part here>.
Pascal, Python, maybe Java are all great languages for a beginning programmer.
Pascal was supposed to be a teaching language and does the job very well, I agree. Never used Python, but I've also never heard anything bad about it. Java is very nice with its inability to do serious harm, its garbage collector is helpful too.
I'm sure that it is possible to teach some people C++ as their first language.
Believe it or not, it's possible to teach C++ like Pascal. You just need to avoid everything that resembles C. Introduce the for, if, while, String class, cin, cout and basic math functions, and you're in business.
And then there's the fact that if you steal something over $50 (at least around here) it's a felony.
All thefts should be a felony. Don't bother putting a $$$ amount on it. It doesn't matter whether it's 5 cents or 5 million dollars, it's still taking something that isn't yours.
it seems harsh to ruin some stupid kids record because he tried to steal a Tommy Hilfiger shirt.
I'll lay off on the Tommy flames that other people seem to have beaten me to.:) All I've got to say is that one day it's T-shirts, the next it's Ford Mustangs.
There was an aircraft in Canada (I forget the model) which was landed safely after it ran out of fuel midflight and lost all flight systems, except the basic, gyroscopic instruments just about every aircraft since the 30's comes equipped with.
I think the plane you're talking about was the "Gimli Glider", as the people around Winnipeg call it. Air Canada had just received its first shipment of Airbuses, which used the metric system in all its systems (including fuel volume), while all the previous planes Air Canada used were from Boeing and used Imperial measurements. So instead of carrying x gallons of jet fuel, the plane had x litres. To cut a long story short, the plane had to make an emergency landing on an abandoned runway (now a racetrack) halfway to its destination. The pilot was fired for not ensuring he had enough fuel (he was later hired by NASA:). Everybody survived, though.
I think the real reason is an "all of the above". Our current cell phones operate in the 900MHz range, while aircraft nav equipment is in the 100-150MHz range. However, just imagine what a mis-functioning cell phone could do to the navigation equipment if it started operating at 113.7MHz, which is exactly the same frequency as a VOR that a plane might want to use. Suddenly, the "right" direction to fly in is behind the cockpit at all times! Yes, the power output of the cell phone is small, but it is also *much* closer to the cockpit than the VOR transmitters.
I'm pretty sure the FCC and other telecommunications regulating entities wouldn't like cell phones spamming the system, either.:)
By that, I'm assuming you only mean the populated parts of the planet? I can think of *plenty* of places inside my own province where cell phones are just expensive paperweights.
The first thing that struck me about the dangers of digital signatures is the possibility for forgery.
With "conventional" signatures, experts can determine if a signature was forged two ways: Either the signature is an *exact* copy of another signature (something that a person cannot do accidentally), or there are small subtle differences in writing style.
As for digital signatures, there is no way to show they have been forged. Every signature is exactly the same! Yes, I do understand that the crypto keys used would be so big, it'd be impossible (read: improbable) to figure out what the private key is. The simple way to get around having to crack the keys is just going to the client and copying the keys straight. Now the forger has an exact copy of the keys needed to make digital signatures for John Doe.
So, to make the whole digital signature thingie viable, computer security (the actual computer, not the network) has to increase. That would mean getting rid of PCs, as there is not a single PC in the world that can be secure (crack open the box and wipe the BIOS to get around boot-up passwords, etc).
I've been noticing the same things in just about every virus-related news story. My favourite mis-definition was one I saw a few weeks ago: "A worm is a virus that can replicate itself".
If I'm in a crowded room and I yell offensive things about somebody -- even if they're untrue -- I can't get in trouble. If I do the exact same things in print -- like a magazine or a newspaper -- then I can.
Not quite... If you're in a crowded room, and you say things that are untrue, you can be sued for slander. If the things you said were true, then you can't get into trouble.
You're right about the published stuff. If it's untrue, then you can get sued for libel.
I must admit. That response was very well written.
However, I have to disagree with a few of your points. Namely, your justification for pirating music.
1.Out and out pirate - This person pirates everything because they can. They have no intention of buying anything they steal. This is what industry would like you to think everyone is.
2.Pirate by need - This is someone who copies digital works because they either cannot afford to pay the cost to purchase it legally and would gladly do so if they had the income to support it (i.e. Windows 98SE - $180) or the product is so rare that it's next to impossible to find (i.e. rare music tracks/bands, old games, etc)
3.Pirate by want - Similar to the 'Pirate by need' this is a person who spends most of his time collecting a little bit of everything. Most of these pirates are harmless by nature. They would grab expensive toys like lightwave, play with it, and delete it because they get bored with it. No revenue is lost by industry because of this kind of pirate since they'd never buy the product in the first place.
4.Try it out pirate - This is something I've done before. Heard both good and bad reviews about software? Snake a copy of it, try it out, and if ya like it, ya buy it.
We both agree the first kind of pirate is bad.
The second type of pirate is nonsense. Nobody *needs* music for the same reason nobody *needs* Windows 98. If you can afford the computer hardware to run Win98, you can afford to buy a legit copy of Win98. Theft due to necessity is still theft. If a person really needed something badly (food, shelter, etc), they could find an organization that can easily help them out (church, YMCA, etc).
I have to agree that the third type of pirate is harmless to the industry. However, just because you want something doesn't mean you should go out and steal it. If I went out and stole everything I ever wanted, I'd be in deep trouble. Why shouldn't the same thing apply to music? Just because I ordinarily wouldn't buy things, doesn't justify why I should steal it.
The fourth type of pirate is ideologically a good one. However, that was tried out in the 1980s/early 90s when it was called "Shareware". Big flop. Nobody ever registered their shareware. The reason nobody ever bothered to register? Why pay for the "real" product when I already have the whole thing/what I need? There is also a very simple solution for these types of pirates to avoid doing anything illegal: Go to your local record store and ask them if you could listen to the album in-store (almost all of them allow you to do this).
You're right. It is over-simplified. All microeconomics are based on supply-demand. Where the monkey-wrenches come in is when you have imperfect competition: Monopolies, Competitive Monopolies, etc. Then the rules get "bent".
I have to admit, I was not aware the the big five tried to fix prices.
And that equilibrium price would be nearly zero as quantity is nearly infinite.
What's that supposed to mean? The quantity of CDs is hardly nearly infinite. Only so many CDs can be stamped at a time, so it is definitely finite. So there's a certain quantity of CDs to be sold. Let's say the record company sets the price at $50 per CD. People will stop buying CDs (a few will keep purchasing, though) because the amount of enjoyment per dollar is too low. The record company won't make any money. Therefore, they will set the price somewhere where everybody can get satisfaction (the consumers get enough enjoyment for their dollar to buy the album).
Depends. If a thief stole more than a meager sum, it won't be me because I'll switch to a more secure bank.
Classic Red Herring. Instead of responding to the topic, change it. Are you implying you will switch to a more secure CD format?
Besides.. white collar crime, like price fixing of CDs, is much more profitable
Says who that CDs are being price fixed?
perhaps you could explain to me why so many people seem willing to cast aside their ethics to download free music if they know it's illegal in economic terms? I'd be most interested in hearing your thoughts on why black markets exist.
People gravitate towards the cheapest price for the best quality. Free == cheapest price.
People think (know?) they can't get charged for downloading illegal MP3s.
Most people are ignorant of economics.
It's not "illegal" in economic terms. I merely stated that Napster is like shoplifting, everybody pays.
Yes I did. You seem to be blaming the piracy of music on the boys who stamp our CDs to be sent to your local music store.
Let's see... Simple economics says that prices tend to an equilibrium where the majority of consumers gain satisfaction from their purchase. So, if the artists really aren't getting any money with their deals with the recording studios, they'd either find another studio or change jobs. If the consumers thought they were getting ripped off, they wouldn't buy 5,000,000 Britney Spears CDs.
Of *course* if there's a guy with a van in a back-alley giving away free money that he stole from a bank, people are going to have a line-up around the block to get a piece of the action. Does that make what the thief does moral? I don't think so. He still stole from the bank. Who pays for this "victimless crime"? The innocent, honest consumers.
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I was thinking the same thing, except I was looking for a different key phrase. I was getting excited until I read in the fourth-last paragraph:
In the Corporate Republic...
Aaaaargh!!!
It was a pretty good original post. But the downside is that the record companies and artists wouldn't make as much money as they normally do now (unless of course someone wants to buy the song at a few million).
I also must agree about the moderation. There's no way to stop it. Most people moderate only new articles, and then only moderate other posts that have been moderated up (me-too syndrome).
Just because the roots of an operating system is old, doesn't mean it's obsolete. For example, Windows 98 is a version of CP/M, which was new in 1974. If someone was going to try and say that just because Win98 is based on an OS that is 26 years old is out of date, they should be dragged into the street and shot. The same goes for Mr. Gelernter's quote above.
Aaaargh! The Daystar! It hurts us, the yellow face!
[A professor] in the introductory part of a guest lecture on robotics to the graduate core AI class: (approximate quote) `Pretty soon we'll have robots that are sophisticated enough to wander around in shopping malls and pick up girls.' I didn't listen to the rest of the lecture, so I don't know what else he had to say.
I read some of the article, and came to the part on sexism. Above is one of the examples of the fierce sexism in CS (the others are pretty nasty, but I've never seen anything close to them). I have read the above example numerous times but fail to find anything demeaning towards women in it. If anything, it is a joke about simplistic male minds.
There's going to be ((Jar-Jar)^2)/2!
Let's just hope Jar-Jar is smaller than 2, then there'd be less than a whole Jar-Jar.
I get your pardon, INTENT is what I meant. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
if anything they'd post false mp3 links to get traffic. I doubt the post mp3 links to deliberately violate copyright laws.
From what I read, the site doesn't post false mp3 links to get traffic. They're checking the sites to see if they contain mp3s, then making links to them. They are DELIBERATELY making links to illegal MP3s. There is only one intent to making a link: Having someone follow it.
Good point. I did forget to mention about intent in that post. However, I did not forget to mention it in one of my other replies.
Moral of the story: If you know what you're doing is bad, don't do it. It's probably illegal, and if isn't it probably will be Very Soon Now. Use common sense.
Three words: Aiding and abetting.
Finally, unless you can offer a suggestion to prevent abuse given you're so inclined to argue against other supposed abuses please don't waste people's time guess-legislating.
Either you're missing punctuation marks, or your sentence structure is bad. Can you say it again?
Yes, linking in itself is harmless. Knowingly linking to an illegal site is different. To convict someone of a crime (at maximum penalty), you need to show two things: 1. The person did the crime, and 2. The person knew it was a crime. So knowing that what you are doing is bad is *very* relevant.
If I know of a place that makes moonshine and then tell people about it, does that make me an accessory?
If moonshine is illegal where you live, yes.
Next you're gonna tell me merely thinking of linking to a site is a crime.
Okay, now you're just trying to create a slippery slope. Using a fallacious argument is not proper.
There are restrictions to make sure you don't tread upon other people's rights. For instance, someone could stand up and start slandering political figures, then try and hide behind "free speech". Whose right is the greater? The slanderer to say whatever he wants, or the slanderee to have his good name protected from false claims?
Besides, you seem to have missed the point of my original post. Linking to an illegal site is synonymous with fencing stolen goods. If you know that what you're distributing is hot, then you're in the bad. And in this instance, the site doing the linking *knows* the MP3s are illegal. This has nothing to do with free speech.
Both sides are right. Linking in itself, is harmless. But when you *know* you're linking to a pirated MP3, and you check to make sure it really is, you're an accessory to piracy. The site that actually hosts the file should be shut down and punished harshly, while the site that linked to it (knowing that the site it linked to was illegal) should get a slap on the wrist.
It's not exactly the syntax of C that is difficult for beginners, moreso it is the low-levelishness of C that makes it hard to learn. Beginning programmers need to learn how to formulate a plan and write it out (make algorithms), they do not need to worry about shooting themselves in the <insert body part here>.
Pascal, Python, maybe Java are all great languages for a beginning programmer.
Pascal was supposed to be a teaching language and does the job very well, I agree. Never used Python, but I've also never heard anything bad about it. Java is very nice with its inability to do serious harm, its garbage collector is helpful too.
I'm sure that it is possible to teach some people C++ as their first language.
Believe it or not, it's possible to teach C++ like Pascal. You just need to avoid everything that resembles C. Introduce the for, if, while, String class, cin, cout and basic math functions, and you're in business.
All thefts should be a felony. Don't bother putting a $$$ amount on it. It doesn't matter whether it's 5 cents or 5 million dollars, it's still taking something that isn't yours.
it seems harsh to ruin some stupid kids record because he tried to steal a Tommy Hilfiger shirt.
I'll lay off on the Tommy flames that other people seem to have beaten me to. :) All I've got to say is that one day it's T-shirts, the next it's Ford Mustangs.
I think the plane you're talking about was the "Gimli Glider", as the people around Winnipeg call it. Air Canada had just received its first shipment of Airbuses, which used the metric system in all its systems (including fuel volume), while all the previous planes Air Canada used were from Boeing and used Imperial measurements. So instead of carrying x gallons of jet fuel, the plane had x litres. To cut a long story short, the plane had to make an emergency landing on an abandoned runway (now a racetrack) halfway to its destination. The pilot was fired for not ensuring he had enough fuel (he was later hired by NASA :). Everybody survived, though.
I'm pretty sure the FCC and other telecommunications regulating entities wouldn't like cell phones spamming the system, either. :)
By that, I'm assuming you only mean the populated parts of the planet? I can think of *plenty* of places inside my own province where cell phones are just expensive paperweights.
With "conventional" signatures, experts can determine if a signature was forged two ways: Either the signature is an *exact* copy of another signature (something that a person cannot do accidentally), or there are small subtle differences in writing style.
As for digital signatures, there is no way to show they have been forged. Every signature is exactly the same! Yes, I do understand that the crypto keys used would be so big, it'd be impossible (read: improbable) to figure out what the private key is. The simple way to get around having to crack the keys is just going to the client and copying the keys straight. Now the forger has an exact copy of the keys needed to make digital signatures for John Doe.
So, to make the whole digital signature thingie viable, computer security (the actual computer, not the network) has to increase. That would mean getting rid of PCs, as there is not a single PC in the world that can be secure (crack open the box and wipe the BIOS to get around boot-up passwords, etc).
Actually, the term Eat Flaming Death comes from a 1980s comic called CPU Wars
I've been noticing the same things in just about every virus-related news story. My favourite mis-definition was one I saw a few weeks ago: "A worm is a virus that can replicate itself".
Not quite... If you're in a crowded room, and you say things that are untrue, you can be sued for slander. If the things you said were true, then you can't get into trouble.
You're right about the published stuff. If it's untrue, then you can get sued for libel.
However, I have to disagree with a few of your points. Namely, your justification for pirating music.
1.Out and out pirate - This person pirates everything because they can. They have no intention of buying anything they steal. This is what industry would like you to think everyone is.
2.Pirate by need - This is someone who copies digital works because they either cannot afford to pay the cost to purchase it legally and would gladly do so if they had the income to support it (i.e. Windows 98SE - $180) or the product is so rare that it's next to impossible to find (i.e. rare music tracks/bands, old games, etc)
3.Pirate by want - Similar to the 'Pirate by need' this is a person who spends most of his time collecting a little bit of everything. Most of these pirates are harmless by nature. They would grab expensive toys like lightwave, play with it, and delete it because they get bored with it. No revenue is lost by industry because of this kind of pirate since they'd never buy the product in the first place.
4.Try it out pirate - This is something I've done before. Heard both good and bad reviews about software? Snake a copy of it, try it out, and if ya like it, ya buy it.
We both agree the first kind of pirate is bad.
The second type of pirate is nonsense. Nobody *needs* music for the same reason nobody *needs* Windows 98. If you can afford the computer hardware to run Win98, you can afford to buy a legit copy of Win98. Theft due to necessity is still theft. If a person really needed something badly (food, shelter, etc), they could find an organization that can easily help them out (church, YMCA, etc).
I have to agree that the third type of pirate is harmless to the industry. However, just because you want something doesn't mean you should go out and steal it. If I went out and stole everything I ever wanted, I'd be in deep trouble. Why shouldn't the same thing apply to music? Just because I ordinarily wouldn't buy things, doesn't justify why I should steal it.
The fourth type of pirate is ideologically a good one. However, that was tried out in the 1980s/early 90s when it was called "Shareware". Big flop. Nobody ever registered their shareware. The reason nobody ever bothered to register? Why pay for the "real" product when I already have the whole thing/what I need? There is also a very simple solution for these types of pirates to avoid doing anything illegal: Go to your local record store and ask them if you could listen to the album in-store (almost all of them allow you to do this).
I have to admit, I was not aware the the big five tried to fix prices.
What's that supposed to mean? The quantity of CDs is hardly nearly infinite. Only so many CDs can be stamped at a time, so it is definitely finite. So there's a certain quantity of CDs to be sold. Let's say the record company sets the price at $50 per CD. People will stop buying CDs (a few will keep purchasing, though) because the amount of enjoyment per dollar is too low. The record company won't make any money. Therefore, they will set the price somewhere where everybody can get satisfaction (the consumers get enough enjoyment for their dollar to buy the album).
Depends. If a thief stole more than a meager sum, it won't be me because I'll switch to a more secure bank.
Classic Red Herring. Instead of responding to the topic, change it. Are you implying you will switch to a more secure CD format?
Besides.. white collar crime, like price fixing of CDs, is much more profitable
Says who that CDs are being price fixed?
perhaps you could explain to me why so many people seem willing to cast aside their ethics to download free music if they know it's illegal in economic terms? I'd be most interested in hearing your thoughts on why black markets exist.
Let's see... Simple economics says that prices tend to an equilibrium where the majority of consumers gain satisfaction from their purchase. So, if the artists really aren't getting any money with their deals with the recording studios, they'd either find another studio or change jobs. If the consumers thought they were getting ripped off, they wouldn't buy 5,000,000 Britney Spears CDs.
Of *course* if there's a guy with a van in a back-alley giving away free money that he stole from a bank, people are going to have a line-up around the block to get a piece of the action. Does that make what the thief does moral? I don't think so. He still stole from the bank. Who pays for this "victimless crime"? The innocent, honest consumers.