how about instead of paying their lawyers in attempts to ridiculously broaden copyright law they pay their programmers to put a stop to the account hacking which resulted in 15,000 gold worth of void crystals being stolen from my guild's bank.
How is Blizzard supposed to control whether or not some twit in your guild gets hit with a trojan? Maybe they can implement a polling function that makes every online guild member run through a special raid dungeon before someone is allowed to log on?
If we can ever find a strong candidate outside the two main parties, t'will the the start of the end for the rather idiotic two-party system.
How do you propose to deal with the "inexperienced" card that will come up. Ie, "If your third party candidate is so STRONG, why can't they work with the other two parties?" Or, "Your candidate isn't strong, they lack the experience to be able to build a concensus on Capitol Hill."
I think what it comes down to is that Wright went on the record saying that 9/11 was the result of America's actions around the world. That is the political third rail. You can't talk about what really caused 9/11. You can't talk about the root causes of terrorism. You have to toe the party line on that one and Obama can't associate himself with anyone who is saying that 9/11 is the result of bad American foreign policy.
Telia should be able to send traffic via their other link(s) which should also have peering at some point to Cogent. The other problem that I suspect the problem is that Cogent is dropping Telia traffic coming in from Cogent's other peers. Cogent shouldn't do this, it breaks the internet. If Cogent is announcing prefixes to other peers, they need to receive all non-abusive traffic from those other peers, not null-route it.
That is exactly what is going on. Cogent is dropping all traffic that originates from Telia's IP blocks no matter what route it takes into their network.
You're missing the fact that at the upper tiers of the internet, there are only so many routes available. There are simply somethings that can't be routed around because the ONLY route to where you want to go involves passing packets across the network you are trying to route around. Consider a smaller example. You want to route traffic to a Verizon DSL customer. Verizon has decided it doesn't want to pass your packets to the DSL customer. No matter how you try to route it, since Verizon sold the DSL service and controls the last few hops in the route, you simply can't route to the customer any other way.
The current issue involves "peering arrangements/agreements." Do a Google search if you want an in depth explination of what exactly a peering arrangement is all about. The short version is that ISPs agree to pass each others traffic across their networks. That's the way the internet works. Every ISP can't have a router in every place that a router needs to be placed. So they "share" each routes with each other.
Or some evil script rewted their box and installed a stealthed torrent client that then proceeded to swap the no day radio hits across their Comcast line without them knowing. All of that could have been prevented if Comcast was properly filtering their traffic.
I've never called my representatives before, but I called them about a month ago when they walked out and in the process let the original telecom bill lapse. I looked up the representative who did it and told his staffer to keep up the good work. Then I called my representative and told them that they sure as hell better not grant the telecoms immunity for their treason and unconstitutional actions. I'd like to think that myself and everyone else like me who took the ten minutes out of their lives to make their voices heard actually had some impact on the process.
You're coming across as pretty delusional. So in this world of yours where everyone can provide the service, how does that work? Every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to be a content provider has to run their own network into the major studios? Maybe they can use the internet... but then who owns that? Maybe we can have twenty million different, parallel networks so that people can have some choice. Where are things going to homerun into? You can't use the CO up the street because it belongs to the local telco, so you have to build your own central office. So does Tom. So does Harry. What's the deal with sewers? Maybe everyone can just go ahead and dig up the street whenever they need to upgrade their infrastructure, which pretty much means the streets will always be dug up because of all the parallel infrastructure. Or maybe, there won't be any need for sewers because there won't be any stinky shit being peddled?
On one hand you talk about people having choice in "power grid connector nodes", but you conveniently leave out who is supposed to own the power grid in the first place. Who is supposed to build the infrastructure? If I already have power, why do I want you to have power? Maybe you can pay me enough to give you some power. Maybe I decide that you couldn't ever offer me enough for the power that I have. Then what? You go build your own power infrastructure?
It's really easy to stand up on a soap box and decry government regulation long after that regulation has gotten things to the point where they are at. I think you have to be pretty naive to believe that we'd be where we are today if the government hadn't had a guiding hand in the process. I'm all for shrinking the size of government, but the reality of the situation is that human beings are naturally inclined to build and horde power of all kinds. Without the government there to establish some framework, people simply won't work together and the biggest, strongest, best positioned bully will control all of the resources. If you want to see a true lack of central government, take a trip to Somalia some time. Those warlords are pretty monopolistic, and I'm willing to bet that the central government didn't get together and vote on how much power to give them.
Or conversely, charm and skill are for those with more time than money. Some of the smoothest talkers I've ever known have been broke bastards with all sorts of free time on their hands. They learned to be smooth talkers out of necessity so that they could charm their way into womens pants and onto the couches of their friends once the women realize that they aren't exclusive.
Did you read the article? It does a really good job of detailing the exact projects that the $14 million is being invested in. Having skimmed the article, it seems like the DOE is throwing money at projects that are already well on their way and could use some extra cash to get to the next level. In addition, this is just a single infusion of $14 million into the realm of solar power. There could easily be another $14 million next year, and again the year after that.
While I agree that this is chump change compared to what is being spent on coal and the war in Iraq, it does represent a significant investment into worthwhile technologies.
I remember American Revolt. I remember lots and lots of rocket launchers, but that's about it...
And air strikes, and I think it might have satellite bombardment too. American Revolt was brutal, it required a real mastery of the game. Syndicate Wars was too good, but not quite the original. They focused more on the story which was a nice twist, but it felt like you lost some of the free form, do whatever you want control that the original had.
Of course Google won't come right out and say that they are trying to completely own and capitalize on everything that you do online. On the other hand, De Icaza doesn't seem to have any qualms with spelling it out. It really does make sense and it seems to reenforce something that I've said many times before. It doesn't really matter if you use Linux, or OSX or Windows. They all pretty much do the exact same thing in slightly different ways. There are only so many popular uses for a computer in terms of determining what applications you use. The important thing is the data. Google seems to be really focused on becoming the prominent mechanism that people use to sort, search, index, store and create data with.
...people arrested for possession of harder drugs should be treated and not thrown into prison.
I only half agree with this. Treatment is too easy for drug addicts to not commit to. Sometimes the best course of action is to threaten people with the loss of what they value, their freedom. Having said that, I don't think that the government needs to be interfering in our personal lives. If the guy next to me wants to smoke a bowl, or smoke a rock of crack I don't care. You can't legislate morality. There are already plenty of laws to deal with the "effects of drugs on society." When I say that I'm referring to the laws against assault, burglary, theft, murder, money laundering and all of the other aspects that are involved in the drug world.
That's half of what Senator Obama's supporters have been talking about. Recall JFK's quote of "ask not what your country can do for you". For as much as Obama talks about change I think him (and most of his supporters) realize that it won't happen unless he can keep people involved after the election. That's where his charisma and oratory skills come into play and it's one of the reasons why I can't understand why everybody trashes him for being inspiring. Is there something wrong with an inspiring leader?
There isn't anything wrong with an inspiring leader. My only beef with Obama is that he is backed by the CFR. He is talking about change because those in power know that the people want change and the best way to placate the masses is to tell them what they want to hear. Obama is just too new and has come up too fast. The first I heard of him he was the youngest black Senator, or something like that. A year and a half later he was running for President. He can spend all day talking about change. He hasn't been around long enough to develop any sort of record to prove that he has practiced what he is preaching. On the other hand, we have Ron Paul with a long, long history of being the guy in Congress who always votes no to out of control government spending and legislation that goes against the Constitution.
The problem is that Ron Paul wouldn't leave it there -- and I have serious disagreements with the rest of his platform.
Everyone has some problem with something that Ron Paul believes in. I think they give the role of the President too much credit. Although he may have some far out beliefs about drastically shrinking the government, he still has to get through Congress. It makes me sad that people can't realize that the potential good outweighs the potential bad. If Ron Paul were President he would put Congress in check. Warantless wiretapping? No way. Enhanced interrogation techniques? No way.
I grow as weary of Government as the next guy but why can't people around here see that the Libertarian extreme is no better than the hard left or hard right extremes? Do you really want to see a return to the dog-eat-dog world of the 19th century?
Thank you for saying this. I'm much like you in that I'm weary of the government and their centralized power. When I really stopped and took a look around, I realized that I'm not prevented from doing anything that I want to do. The only time I've had run ins with the government always involved drugs. I do think that the drug laws are all out of wack with regards to personal liberty. On the other hand, I'm glad that the enforcement mechanism was there to save me from myself. I'm talking about hard drugs here, not marijuana.
It seems to me that the people who are always going on about how bad the system is are the ones who want to change it. Yet for everyone out there clamoring for change, I have yet to see any decent proposals. The closest anyone has come to offering some real positive change was Ron Paul. He actually wanted to dismantle the empire and bring the troops home. We all know how quickly he got sidelined.
In the end, I have come to the realization that change starts with me and if I want to change and make the world a better place, the government can't do anything about it. I can consciously stop driving my car and take buses and trains to work. I can consciously stop purchasing all of the consumer crap that our economy revolves around. Every time I ride the train through the hood I don't mind paying taxes. I don't mind that there are Metro workers keeping the platforms clean, or LASD deputies keeping the peace.
I've gone off on a tangent here, but what it comes down to is this... terrorism is real. The government won't talk about the root cause of it, and isn't going to address the root cause of it. They are going to keep doing what they need to do to secure oil supplies to keep our economy running. They are going to keep supporting evil regimes who oppress their people but grant us access to discount oil. I'd love it if our way of life wasn't so inefficient that it requires the resources from the rest of the world to sustain it. But it is, at least until we consciously decide to make it so that it isn't.
That's the problem with developers. They are so sex starved that even a single lunch a strip club will sway them and completely disarm any sort of logical decision making processes they might have. Kudos to the sales staff who persuaded your developers to go along with such a hare brained scheme. Their Jedi powers must be good.
Similarly, I dropped $70 on the LotR Extended Edition boxed set. I spent $20 for Platoon. I would not pay that much for Miss Congeniality.
I understand where you are coming from. I'm still in the same mindset that I was in back when I was swapping the zero day fifteen years ago. Back then if I downloaded something that I really liked, I would go to the store and buy the game because I wanted to support the company that put it out. Now in the long run it didn't matter because they all got bought out by EA anyway, but that's not the point. =)
If they spent all this time and money on making better movies and finding innovative ways to lure me back into theater (away from my home theater),..
What are you watching on your home theater? The same old DVDs that you've had forever. Despite the poorly drawn conclusions of the article, ticket sales in the theaters don't really have anything to do with piracy. The piracy issue is on the DVD front... the movies that people like you watch on your home theater system. Now either you buy old "classics" on DVD and content yourself with those, or you purchase some of the new stuff that you seem to think isn't worth while.
What I foresee eventually happening is that Hollywood and the creative types in the world will come to realize that the public isn't willing and or able to support them. The public will lose interest in providing a star multiple millions of dollars to sit in front of the camera playing make believe. The studios will realize that they can't keep the movie making juggernaut of writers, grips, camera operators, sound techs, costumers, make-up artists, etc. etc. employed playing make believe.
What it really all boils down to is that people pay what they think the production is worth. If they want the experience of the theater they will pay for it at the theater. If they want to watch it at home the majority of them will pay to rent it. I think the logical fallacy taking place is that the studios are losing money because of piracy. I'd bet that over 80% of the people who pirate a movie would simply go without if they suddenly couldn't get a free copy of it. Most of my friends who are into movies and really like movies want to support the studios and they cringe at the thought of having a "movie collection" in a CD case with the names scrawled on them in Sharpie.
Despite the "losses to piracy", the studios continue to put out a good quality product and employ large numbers of people. They don't seem to be hurting that much. The large majority of Hollywood is unionized. Those people make relatively obscene amounts of money for what they do, and the perks are top notch.
I realize I didn't really address the original question of "What alternatives do we have." I don't see many. Like I stated earlier, people pay what they are willing to pay. Hollywood could identify the conduits of piracy and increases the cost to compensate. For example, they could charge movie rental places more for the original copies. Those places would then charge their customers more to rent them. The people who make copies of the rentals would then in essence be "paying" for the movie. I think that would have the opposite effect though because suddenly a large number of people would decide that they didn't want to rent movies because they were too expensive, and so they'd pirate them or wait until their neighbor rents the movie and makes them an archival copy. The only other option is to lower the cost of the movies to the point where people who are pirating them decide to buy them instead. In theory they could then reap their benefits by sales volume instead of individual unit price. That won't happen though because I truly believe that the people who really want to buy a DVD movie are already paying the price that Hollywood asks. Everyone else just doesn't place a high premium on having a bookcase filled with plastic boxes with pretty pictures on them. They're happy with Sharpie labelled Memorex discs that play the movie as soon as you put it in the player and don't require skipping through warnings, previews and choosing menu options.
The article is drawing the correlation between MOVIE THEATER revenues and the illicit copying of DVDs. I'd like to see some real numbers about the actual sales in inflation adjusted figures for DVD sales between 2002 and 2007. I'm guessing that they have gone somewhat significantly. Just about everyone I know rents their movies from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and then if they like it, they toss the disc into the computer and make an archival copy to watch at a later date incase they forget a part of the movie.
All the data in the article is proving is that a fairly consistent number of people enjoy going out to the movies. It doesn't have anything to do with piracy.
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How is Blizzard supposed to control whether or not some twit in your guild gets hit with a trojan? Maybe they can implement a polling function that makes every online guild member run through a special raid dungeon before someone is allowed to log on?
How do you propose to deal with the "inexperienced" card that will come up. Ie, "If your third party candidate is so STRONG, why can't they work with the other two parties?" Or, "Your candidate isn't strong, they lack the experience to be able to build a concensus on Capitol Hill."
I think what it comes down to is that Wright went on the record saying that 9/11 was the result of America's actions around the world. That is the political third rail. You can't talk about what really caused 9/11. You can't talk about the root causes of terrorism. You have to toe the party line on that one and Obama can't associate himself with anyone who is saying that 9/11 is the result of bad American foreign policy.
This is a good article because now we have some idea about what all of that bloatware is worth to PC manufacturers. $150.
"Drop the assembler and nobody gets hurt!"
"All of your bases are belong to us!!"
??????
That is exactly what is going on. Cogent is dropping all traffic that originates from Telia's IP blocks no matter what route it takes into their network.
The current issue involves "peering arrangements/agreements." Do a Google search if you want an in depth explination of what exactly a peering arrangement is all about. The short version is that ISPs agree to pass each others traffic across their networks. That's the way the internet works. Every ISP can't have a router in every place that a router needs to be placed. So they "share" each routes with each other.
Or some evil script rewted their box and installed a stealthed torrent client that then proceeded to swap the no day radio hits across their Comcast line without them knowing. All of that could have been prevented if Comcast was properly filtering their traffic.
I've never called my representatives before, but I called them about a month ago when they walked out and in the process let the original telecom bill lapse. I looked up the representative who did it and told his staffer to keep up the good work. Then I called my representative and told them that they sure as hell better not grant the telecoms immunity for their treason and unconstitutional actions. I'd like to think that myself and everyone else like me who took the ten minutes out of their lives to make their voices heard actually had some impact on the process.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/paulsons-lament-deregulation-has-been/story.aspx?guid=%7B4AEF15AC-3966-4656-8108-C96712A88D68%7D
On one hand you talk about people having choice in "power grid connector nodes", but you conveniently leave out who is supposed to own the power grid in the first place. Who is supposed to build the infrastructure? If I already have power, why do I want you to have power? Maybe you can pay me enough to give you some power. Maybe I decide that you couldn't ever offer me enough for the power that I have. Then what? You go build your own power infrastructure?
It's really easy to stand up on a soap box and decry government regulation long after that regulation has gotten things to the point where they are at. I think you have to be pretty naive to believe that we'd be where we are today if the government hadn't had a guiding hand in the process. I'm all for shrinking the size of government, but the reality of the situation is that human beings are naturally inclined to build and horde power of all kinds. Without the government there to establish some framework, people simply won't work together and the biggest, strongest, best positioned bully will control all of the resources. If you want to see a true lack of central government, take a trip to Somalia some time. Those warlords are pretty monopolistic, and I'm willing to bet that the central government didn't get together and vote on how much power to give them.
Or conversely, charm and skill are for those with more time than money. Some of the smoothest talkers I've ever known have been broke bastards with all sorts of free time on their hands. They learned to be smooth talkers out of necessity so that they could charm their way into womens pants and onto the couches of their friends once the women realize that they aren't exclusive.
Perhaps flamebait would have been more appropriate. Whatever the case, it wasn't really relevent to the discussion at hand.
While I agree that this is chump change compared to what is being spent on coal and the war in Iraq, it does represent a significant investment into worthwhile technologies.
And air strikes, and I think it might have satellite bombardment too. American Revolt was brutal, it required a real mastery of the game. Syndicate Wars was too good, but not quite the original. They focused more on the story which was a nice twist, but it felt like you lost some of the free form, do whatever you want control that the original had.
And Bullfrog. I want my next Syndicate fix, the bastards!!
Of course Google won't come right out and say that they are trying to completely own and capitalize on everything that you do online. On the other hand, De Icaza doesn't seem to have any qualms with spelling it out. It really does make sense and it seems to reenforce something that I've said many times before. It doesn't really matter if you use Linux, or OSX or Windows. They all pretty much do the exact same thing in slightly different ways. There are only so many popular uses for a computer in terms of determining what applications you use. The important thing is the data. Google seems to be really focused on becoming the prominent mechanism that people use to sort, search, index, store and create data with.
I only half agree with this. Treatment is too easy for drug addicts to not commit to. Sometimes the best course of action is to threaten people with the loss of what they value, their freedom. Having said that, I don't think that the government needs to be interfering in our personal lives. If the guy next to me wants to smoke a bowl, or smoke a rock of crack I don't care. You can't legislate morality. There are already plenty of laws to deal with the "effects of drugs on society." When I say that I'm referring to the laws against assault, burglary, theft, murder, money laundering and all of the other aspects that are involved in the drug world.
That's half of what Senator Obama's supporters have been talking about. Recall JFK's quote of "ask not what your country can do for you". For as much as Obama talks about change I think him (and most of his supporters) realize that it won't happen unless he can keep people involved after the election. That's where his charisma and oratory skills come into play and it's one of the reasons why I can't understand why everybody trashes him for being inspiring. Is there something wrong with an inspiring leader?
There isn't anything wrong with an inspiring leader. My only beef with Obama is that he is backed by the CFR. He is talking about change because those in power know that the people want change and the best way to placate the masses is to tell them what they want to hear. Obama is just too new and has come up too fast. The first I heard of him he was the youngest black Senator, or something like that. A year and a half later he was running for President. He can spend all day talking about change. He hasn't been around long enough to develop any sort of record to prove that he has practiced what he is preaching. On the other hand, we have Ron Paul with a long, long history of being the guy in Congress who always votes no to out of control government spending and legislation that goes against the Constitution.
The problem is that Ron Paul wouldn't leave it there -- and I have serious disagreements with the rest of his platform.
Everyone has some problem with something that Ron Paul believes in. I think they give the role of the President too much credit. Although he may have some far out beliefs about drastically shrinking the government, he still has to get through Congress. It makes me sad that people can't realize that the potential good outweighs the potential bad. If Ron Paul were President he would put Congress in check. Warantless wiretapping? No way. Enhanced interrogation techniques? No way.
Thank you for saying this. I'm much like you in that I'm weary of the government and their centralized power. When I really stopped and took a look around, I realized that I'm not prevented from doing anything that I want to do. The only time I've had run ins with the government always involved drugs. I do think that the drug laws are all out of wack with regards to personal liberty. On the other hand, I'm glad that the enforcement mechanism was there to save me from myself. I'm talking about hard drugs here, not marijuana.
It seems to me that the people who are always going on about how bad the system is are the ones who want to change it. Yet for everyone out there clamoring for change, I have yet to see any decent proposals. The closest anyone has come to offering some real positive change was Ron Paul. He actually wanted to dismantle the empire and bring the troops home. We all know how quickly he got sidelined.
In the end, I have come to the realization that change starts with me and if I want to change and make the world a better place, the government can't do anything about it. I can consciously stop driving my car and take buses and trains to work. I can consciously stop purchasing all of the consumer crap that our economy revolves around. Every time I ride the train through the hood I don't mind paying taxes. I don't mind that there are Metro workers keeping the platforms clean, or LASD deputies keeping the peace.
I've gone off on a tangent here, but what it comes down to is this... terrorism is real. The government won't talk about the root cause of it, and isn't going to address the root cause of it. They are going to keep doing what they need to do to secure oil supplies to keep our economy running. They are going to keep supporting evil regimes who oppress their people but grant us access to discount oil. I'd love it if our way of life wasn't so inefficient that it requires the resources from the rest of the world to sustain it. But it is, at least until we consciously decide to make it so that it isn't.
That's the problem with developers. They are so sex starved that even a single lunch a strip club will sway them and completely disarm any sort of logical decision making processes they might have. Kudos to the sales staff who persuaded your developers to go along with such a hare brained scheme. Their Jedi powers must be good.
I understand where you are coming from. I'm still in the same mindset that I was in back when I was swapping the zero day fifteen years ago. Back then if I downloaded something that I really liked, I would go to the store and buy the game because I wanted to support the company that put it out. Now in the long run it didn't matter because they all got bought out by EA anyway, but that's not the point. =)
What are you watching on your home theater? The same old DVDs that you've had forever. Despite the poorly drawn conclusions of the article, ticket sales in the theaters don't really have anything to do with piracy. The piracy issue is on the DVD front... the movies that people like you watch on your home theater system. Now either you buy old "classics" on DVD and content yourself with those, or you purchase some of the new stuff that you seem to think isn't worth while.
The Bourne Trilogy was great. There are good movies out there.
What it really all boils down to is that people pay what they think the production is worth. If they want the experience of the theater they will pay for it at the theater. If they want to watch it at home the majority of them will pay to rent it. I think the logical fallacy taking place is that the studios are losing money because of piracy. I'd bet that over 80% of the people who pirate a movie would simply go without if they suddenly couldn't get a free copy of it. Most of my friends who are into movies and really like movies want to support the studios and they cringe at the thought of having a "movie collection" in a CD case with the names scrawled on them in Sharpie.
Despite the "losses to piracy", the studios continue to put out a good quality product and employ large numbers of people. They don't seem to be hurting that much. The large majority of Hollywood is unionized. Those people make relatively obscene amounts of money for what they do, and the perks are top notch.
I realize I didn't really address the original question of "What alternatives do we have." I don't see many. Like I stated earlier, people pay what they are willing to pay. Hollywood could identify the conduits of piracy and increases the cost to compensate. For example, they could charge movie rental places more for the original copies. Those places would then charge their customers more to rent them. The people who make copies of the rentals would then in essence be "paying" for the movie. I think that would have the opposite effect though because suddenly a large number of people would decide that they didn't want to rent movies because they were too expensive, and so they'd pirate them or wait until their neighbor rents the movie and makes them an archival copy. The only other option is to lower the cost of the movies to the point where people who are pirating them decide to buy them instead. In theory they could then reap their benefits by sales volume instead of individual unit price. That won't happen though because I truly believe that the people who really want to buy a DVD movie are already paying the price that Hollywood asks. Everyone else just doesn't place a high premium on having a bookcase filled with plastic boxes with pretty pictures on them. They're happy with Sharpie labelled Memorex discs that play the movie as soon as you put it in the player and don't require skipping through warnings, previews and choosing menu options.
All the data in the article is proving is that a fairly consistent number of people enjoy going out to the movies. It doesn't have anything to do with piracy.