What China has also demonstrated is that the anti-censorship technologies tend to languish in obscurity as long as the government does not censor too much. There are lots of Tor users in China, but they amount to only a fraction of a percent of the number of Internet users in China. The only major increases in Tor use in China occur just after the government cranks up the firewall, and Chinese government knows this -- they do not even block Tor most of the time, because they do not want to foster popular interest in it.
I suspect that India will either follow China's lead, or eventually arrive at the same conclusions.
In reality they will only hurt American companies and consumers, not the rest of the world
Actually, this will hurt the rest of the world. It will fracture the DNS system. It will give countries like China and India an excuse to further their own censorship agendas. It will hurt innovation in the US, which will hurt innovation elsewhere. It will make it hard for people do to business with the millions of consumers in the US.
The Internet is global, so one country attacking the Internet harms everyone everywhere. Do you really think that China's firewall has not affected anyone outside of China?
More likely you will see this sort of thing used by "cloud" providers, who can afford a high up-front cost and greatly expand their capacity. A lot of data will sit unused on service providers' storage devices, and so they can have a much higher ratio of storage to computing power.
It is not just about people with "religious beliefs;" when things are not prepackaged, people need to know what they are doing to use them, and most people do not know what they are doing. People rip CDs and put music on their MP3 players all the time because it is all prepackaged: put a CD in a computer, and your OS gives you the option of ripping the tracks; plug an MP3 player in and you can copy the files without pain.
Out of the box, a PC does not come with anything useful for ripping DVDs, and so people with tablets wind up in a world of confusion trying to make everything work. I have seen people get as far as ripping DVDs, only to become confused about which language they are ripping, whether or not they are getting subtitles, whether or not they are getting the director's comments, etc. It is a mess that confuses people and frustrates them, and that mess was created by DRM and the laws that surround DRM.
People were warned years ago about the mess, and the warnings were ignored because of attitudes like yours: dismissive of "religious beliefs" about software and computer freedom.
Re:CES also had some unofficial [Apple] spies...
on
Who Goes To CES?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Considering that between 35% and 95% of the information gathered by the CIA is "open source" (perhaps this use of the term predates ESR?), I think it is a reasonable use of the word "spy:"
If you do not think a.22 is a worthy gun, then why not come down to the range and hold up my targets while I shoot mine?
A.22 is plenty deadly, and I would not bet my life on rimfire cartridges not being less reliable than centerfire. If someone already has a gun pointed at you from a foot away, you are not going to get your gun out of the holster before they shoot you, and that is regardless of what caliber they are packing.
Except that with vinyl, you can make a tape recording without too much effort (a typical tape recorder will have a microphone input). You can make a CD with similar ease. You can make an MP3 with similar ease. None of your electronics will actively thwart your attempts to play the music you purchased on different devices. You might say that the quality will be reduced, which is fine -- nobody expects to be given higher quality copies, but it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to continue to use your lower quality copies.
The problem is not that people will not receive new copies, but rather that they will be unable to legally use their old copies -- they will be forced to choose between buying the same thing over and over again or breaking the law. Watching a movie that you own on DVD using your tablet is not at all unreasonable, and everyone has the necessary equipment in their home. What is the logic behind saying that people should buy a new copy of the movie just to play it on their tablet?
Well, you are going to be very sad over the next few years, as it becomes harder and harder to avoid these things. Smart TVs will probably be big money makers, because companies will be able to open new sources of revenue:
Charging a premium for advertisements that cannot be muted or skipped
App stores (lots of money if you run a popular one)
Enforcing payment models for premium shows
Disabling devices or features that threaten profits
Vendor lock-in
Integrating TV advertisements with web advertisements
Dozens of other "creative" ways to monetize smart TVs
In a decade, you might not even be able to find a TV that is not "smart," and if you do you might not be able to watch anything except broadcast channels -- and only low-def.
On the other hand, you will be prevented from doing things that you want to do, right now or in the future when new consumer systems come out. I have seen this happen with DVDs:
Me: Stuff about DRM and deCSS
Other person: Oh so what, only pirates want to rip or copy DVDs! Look, my laptop plays DVDs just fine, and so does my DVD player!
Some years later
Other person: Hey, how can I rip this DVD so that it will play on my new tablet computer?
The problem with these all in one TVs is not the form factor, nor is it the difficulty in upgrading them -- it is the DRM. Someone else gets to dictate to you when and how you use your TV, whether or not you are allowed to fast-forward past certain parts of shows or movies (e.g. you cannot skip commercials, but you can skip non-commercial parts of a show), when you can start watching a movie, where you can buy your movies, etc.
At first, everything will be OK -- after all, you follow the rules and are not a pirate, right? Five years from now, though, there will be new devices that you might want, and you might discover that you actually want to do something that your all-in-one TV will not allow you to do. We saw it happen with DVDs, we have seen it happen with other DRM systems, and I can guarantee that it will happen with "Smart TVs."
Hitting reload would get you through to the content you were originally looking for, so it's not a huge impediment, but enough to wake people up.
People will hit reload, shrug it off, and think that Google is exaggerating the problem. If Google were to go offline all day, every day, then people would notice...and switch to one of Google's competitors. People do not care about the hypothetical problems with SOPA; it will take Facebook, Youtube, etc. being taken offline because of SOPA before people realize there is a problem.
My experience has been that people do not really care about hypothetical consequences. People will not understand that SOPA is a bad thing until it is passed and bad things happen that directly affect their lives. If Facebook were taken down by a SOPA complaint, people would believe that SOPA is bad.
The blackout idea might help to convey the problems with SOPA. More likely, people will think that the problems are being exaggerated by the participants in the blackout.
For saying that the democrats and the republicans are nearly the same party. People loved to attack Bush for the war in Iraq...yet is there any reason to think that Al Gore would not have committed us to such a war? Have people forgotten that Al Gore was vice president at a time when the US was firing cruise missiles into that country?
Now we have Obama, who is surrounded by people with connections to the Clinton administration. Why do people think that Obama is going to be some ultra-left president?
What would it matter to your landlord if you provided yourself access to the internet, and it had nothing to do with him?
Right now, he is providing Internet service, and the cost is rolled into the rent. This is not an uncommon arrangement.
You intend to give him something for the break on rent. Hmm... I wonder what it could be? Perhaps... unauthorized access to the university network? For him and all his tenants?
So you are just going to assume that I have a particular arrangement, then criticize me for it even when I specifically say that I am not making that arrangement? The ironic thing here is that you accused me of pushing a straw man argument. Nobody is getting unauthorized access to anything.
Also, it matters not if all the other tenants are students and employees of the university. Check your terms of use carefully and you will see you alone have your access, and you can not share that access... period, regardless of anothers right to the network, they do not have a right to the network through your access.
Had you read what you were replying to, you would have seen the part where I said that I am setting up a repeater; perhaps it would have been easier for you to understand if I used the marketing term "range extender." Anyone who uses this system will still have to go through the university registration process on their own; the university itself uses similar repeaters on various parts of the campus. This is not some consumer wifi router/ap/NAT gateway system.
I believe the trouble is not that I didn't bother to read your posts... but that you did not bother to think about whether you should do what you are planning.
So not reading my posts is not a problem, because you simply assume that I did not bother to think about the plan? Like I said, I took the time to go through the proper procedure for attaching a repeater to the wireless network -- how is that an example of not thinking things through?
you do not care who cookies belong to or what cookies cost is to those that produced them...
Right, I am recklessly using this network, which is why I took the time to contact the people who run it and go through the established procedure for connecting a repeater.
your criminal, psychological egoist behavior
What criminal behavior would you be referring to? I can legally use the network any time I want, and nobody would be able to use my repeater to illegally access the system. You are continuing to operate under an assumption that I have repeatedly addressed, and it is making this conversation pointless.
I guarantee that your granted access does not extend to your landlord and his other tenants.
Where did I say anything about other tenants?
Everyone who is on the lease is affiliated with the university and has access to the same network.
Even if they were not affiliated, I am setting up a repeater, which means that if someone who was not supposed to have access did somehow gain access using my system, they would be able to do exactly the same thing if they simply went to the university campus a few blocks away.
we're discussing your leveraging that access for financial gain by bartering that access with your landlord against breaks on rent
So if I were to tell my landlord that I no longer intend to use the Internet service he is providing, and walk over to the university to use their service when I wanted to go online, then what? Would you call that "bartering" too? What difference does it make if I walk a few blocks, or set up a repeater and save myself the walk?
First you say you want to share the access you have with others
Really? Where did I say that? I seem to remember specifically saying that I am not planning to do that:
Hey, you do not have to read the posts you are replying to, but if you want to actually discuss something then it would help if you actually did so. Everything else in your post is based on some kind of assumption that I am doing something that I am not actually doing and that I never had any intention of doing. All I am doing and all I ever intended on is to access to campus network from my house; I never planned to share that access with someone who is not authorized. I will still have to register all my devices and go through the same authentication process as I would have to go through if I were on campus.
As far as I can tell, whatever college you went to had strict policies forbidding anyone who is not a student from making use of any school resources, under any circumstances. That must have been a rough experience. Around here, and at my alma mater, there are procedures for allowing non-students and even people who are not affiliated with the university to use school resources. As I said, as you apparently failed to read, employees are even allowed to take courses for credit without paying tuition.
I really do not see much point in continuing this discussion with you, since you are not even bothering to read what I am writing.
You are clearly intending to take something of value, something that is not free, something that costs actual money, that doesn't belong to you for your own personal gain
Something I already have access to and for which my access is not restricted by location or time. There is nothing in any agreement or law that says I have to be physically on university property to use their wireless connection.
Theft
Theft of what? I already have access to the university wireless network and I am allowed to use it whenever I want. How is using it from my house theft?
Now... consider that every IT staffer is doing the same thing as you. Doesn't work.
What gave you the idea that I am an IT staffer?
Why would it be a problem if other people did this? I really want to know -- what would be wrong with people connecting to a network they are free to connect to at any time, if they happen to do so from their house? I really want to hear your logic begin this statement -- why would it be a problem if the IT staff were connecting from their own homes?
I'd have fired you for even asking.
If I had a fascist boss who fired people for asking if they are allowed to do something I would quit -- if I had made the mistake of even accepting a job at such an establishment.
Do your damn job
Is there some reason you think I am not doing my job?
stop trying to leverage your employer's resources for your own personal gain.
Right, I should not use resources that I am entitled to use. Maybe you do not understand this, but I am under the same network usage agreement as the thousands of people who live on this campus and use the network as their primary Internet connection. Employees of this university routinely log on to banks' websites, social network sites, youtube, and a variety of other not-work-related systems using the school's connection -- nobody is breaking any rules by doing so.
Moreover, there are plenty of university employees who use university resources for their hobbies. Most of the members of the HAM radio club are university employees, and they use equipment and electricity that is all owned and paid for by the university -- and they are doing so with the university's blessing. University employees are entitled to take courses without paying tuition. The university does not limit access to its resources to the undergraduates, and the mission here is not to squeeze every penny of profit out of every resource.
Geeks are not even in agreement on technical issues, so how can you expect a candidate that would be good for "geek issues?" Half of/. supports net neutrality as a way to protect the spirit and nature of the Internet, and half oppose it as yet another regulation that will lead to handouts to entrenched interests at the expense of everyone else. There are people who support the interests of the copyright lobby, and people who oppose them. There are free software supporters, and people who think the GPL is a bad thing. Any number of candidates might be supported by the general geek community.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, when we can just send the cops to go after the evil hackers?
Oh look, the paid shills are out in full force. Freedom of speech is an internationally recognized human right:
...and what happens when the rest of the world ignores human rights violations? Things like this:
https://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
What China has also demonstrated is that the anti-censorship technologies tend to languish in obscurity as long as the government does not censor too much. There are lots of Tor users in China, but they amount to only a fraction of a percent of the number of Internet users in China. The only major increases in Tor use in China occur just after the government cranks up the firewall, and Chinese government knows this -- they do not even block Tor most of the time, because they do not want to foster popular interest in it.
I suspect that India will either follow China's lead, or eventually arrive at the same conclusions.
In reality they will only hurt American companies and consumers, not the rest of the world
Actually, this will hurt the rest of the world. It will fracture the DNS system. It will give countries like China and India an excuse to further their own censorship agendas. It will hurt innovation in the US, which will hurt innovation elsewhere. It will make it hard for people do to business with the millions of consumers in the US.
The Internet is global, so one country attacking the Internet harms everyone everywhere. Do you really think that China's firewall has not affected anyone outside of China?
Why? SOPA would prevent US visitors from going to such websites.
Why was this modded funny? This is the truth -- obj-C is popular because of iOS, not because it is some kind of programming language panacea.
More likely you will see this sort of thing used by "cloud" providers, who can afford a high up-front cost and greatly expand their capacity. A lot of data will sit unused on service providers' storage devices, and so they can have a much higher ratio of storage to computing power.
It is not just about people with "religious beliefs;" when things are not prepackaged, people need to know what they are doing to use them, and most people do not know what they are doing. People rip CDs and put music on their MP3 players all the time because it is all prepackaged: put a CD in a computer, and your OS gives you the option of ripping the tracks; plug an MP3 player in and you can copy the files without pain.
Out of the box, a PC does not come with anything useful for ripping DVDs, and so people with tablets wind up in a world of confusion trying to make everything work. I have seen people get as far as ripping DVDs, only to become confused about which language they are ripping, whether or not they are getting subtitles, whether or not they are getting the director's comments, etc. It is a mess that confuses people and frustrates them, and that mess was created by DRM and the laws that surround DRM.
People were warned years ago about the mess, and the warnings were ignored because of attitudes like yours: dismissive of "religious beliefs" about software and computer freedom.
Considering that between 35% and 95% of the information gathered by the CIA is "open source" (perhaps this use of the term predates ESR?), I think it is a reasonable use of the word "spy:"
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/Vol49no2/reexamining_the_distinction_3.htm
If you do not think a .22 is a worthy gun, then why not come down to the range and hold up my targets while I shoot mine?
.22 is plenty deadly, and I would not bet my life on rimfire cartridges not being less reliable than centerfire. If someone already has a gun pointed at you from a foot away, you are not going to get your gun out of the holster before they shoot you, and that is regardless of what caliber they are packing.
A
Except that with vinyl, you can make a tape recording without too much effort (a typical tape recorder will have a microphone input). You can make a CD with similar ease. You can make an MP3 with similar ease. None of your electronics will actively thwart your attempts to play the music you purchased on different devices. You might say that the quality will be reduced, which is fine -- nobody expects to be given higher quality copies, but it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to continue to use your lower quality copies.
The problem is not that people will not receive new copies, but rather that they will be unable to legally use their old copies -- they will be forced to choose between buying the same thing over and over again or breaking the law. Watching a movie that you own on DVD using your tablet is not at all unreasonable, and everyone has the necessary equipment in their home. What is the logic behind saying that people should buy a new copy of the movie just to play it on their tablet?
As soon as people will start playing with TV firmwares
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_hotz
In a decade, you might not even be able to find a TV that is not "smart," and if you do you might not be able to watch anything except broadcast channels -- and only low-def.
The point is for you to watch advertisements. Who cares about good shows?
On the other hand, you will be prevented from doing things that you want to do, right now or in the future when new consumer systems come out. I have seen this happen with DVDs:
Me: Stuff about DRM and deCSS
Other person: Oh so what, only pirates want to rip or copy DVDs! Look, my laptop plays DVDs just fine, and so does my DVD player!
Some years later
Other person: Hey, how can I rip this DVD so that it will play on my new tablet computer?
The problem with these all in one TVs is not the form factor, nor is it the difficulty in upgrading them -- it is the DRM. Someone else gets to dictate to you when and how you use your TV, whether or not you are allowed to fast-forward past certain parts of shows or movies (e.g. you cannot skip commercials, but you can skip non-commercial parts of a show), when you can start watching a movie, where you can buy your movies, etc.
At first, everything will be OK -- after all, you follow the rules and are not a pirate, right? Five years from now, though, there will be new devices that you might want, and you might discover that you actually want to do something that your all-in-one TV will not allow you to do. We saw it happen with DVDs, we have seen it happen with other DRM systems, and I can guarantee that it will happen with "Smart TVs."
Media center PC?
...the full-disclosure list:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/
Hitting reload would get you through to the content you were originally looking for, so it's not a huge impediment, but enough to wake people up.
People will hit reload, shrug it off, and think that Google is exaggerating the problem. If Google were to go offline all day, every day, then people would notice...and switch to one of Google's competitors. People do not care about the hypothetical problems with SOPA; it will take Facebook, Youtube, etc. being taken offline because of SOPA before people realize there is a problem.
My experience has been that people do not really care about hypothetical consequences. People will not understand that SOPA is a bad thing until it is passed and bad things happen that directly affect their lives. If Facebook were taken down by a SOPA complaint, people would believe that SOPA is bad.
The blackout idea might help to convey the problems with SOPA. More likely, people will think that the problems are being exaggerated by the participants in the blackout.
Yet somehow, liberals and progressives in the media attacked this man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_nader
For saying that the democrats and the republicans are nearly the same party. People loved to attack Bush for the war in Iraq...yet is there any reason to think that Al Gore would not have committed us to such a war? Have people forgotten that Al Gore was vice president at a time when the US was firing cruise missiles into that country?
Now we have Obama, who is surrounded by people with connections to the Clinton administration. Why do people think that Obama is going to be some ultra-left president?
You've been whoosh-served.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle
What would it matter to your landlord if you provided yourself access to the internet, and it had nothing to do with him?
Right now, he is providing Internet service, and the cost is rolled into the rent. This is not an uncommon arrangement.
You intend to give him something for the break on rent. Hmm... I wonder what it could be? Perhaps... unauthorized access to the university network? For him and all his tenants?
So you are just going to assume that I have a particular arrangement, then criticize me for it even when I specifically say that I am not making that arrangement? The ironic thing here is that you accused me of pushing a straw man argument. Nobody is getting unauthorized access to anything.
Also, it matters not if all the other tenants are students and employees of the university. Check your terms of use carefully and you will see you alone have your access, and you can not share that access... period, regardless of anothers right to the network, they do not have a right to the network through your access.
Had you read what you were replying to, you would have seen the part where I said that I am setting up a repeater; perhaps it would have been easier for you to understand if I used the marketing term "range extender." Anyone who uses this system will still have to go through the university registration process on their own; the university itself uses similar repeaters on various parts of the campus. This is not some consumer wifi router/ap/NAT gateway system.
I believe the trouble is not that I didn't bother to read your posts... but that you did not bother to think about whether you should do what you are planning.
So not reading my posts is not a problem, because you simply assume that I did not bother to think about the plan? Like I said, I took the time to go through the proper procedure for attaching a repeater to the wireless network -- how is that an example of not thinking things through?
you do not care who cookies belong to or what cookies cost is to those that produced them...
Right, I am recklessly using this network, which is why I took the time to contact the people who run it and go through the established procedure for connecting a repeater.
your criminal, psychological egoist behavior
What criminal behavior would you be referring to? I can legally use the network any time I want, and nobody would be able to use my repeater to illegally access the system. You are continuing to operate under an assumption that I have repeatedly addressed, and it is making this conversation pointless.
I guarantee that your granted access does not extend to your landlord and his other tenants.
we're discussing your leveraging that access for financial gain by bartering that access with your landlord against breaks on rent
So if I were to tell my landlord that I no longer intend to use the Internet service he is providing, and walk over to the university to use their service when I wanted to go online, then what? Would you call that "bartering" too? What difference does it make if I walk a few blocks, or set up a repeater and save myself the walk?
First you say you want to share the access you have with others
Really? Where did I say that? I seem to remember specifically saying that I am not planning to do that:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2609766&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=38641192#38643828
Hey, you do not have to read the posts you are replying to, but if you want to actually discuss something then it would help if you actually did so. Everything else in your post is based on some kind of assumption that I am doing something that I am not actually doing and that I never had any intention of doing. All I am doing and all I ever intended on is to access to campus network from my house; I never planned to share that access with someone who is not authorized. I will still have to register all my devices and go through the same authentication process as I would have to go through if I were on campus.
As far as I can tell, whatever college you went to had strict policies forbidding anyone who is not a student from making use of any school resources, under any circumstances. That must have been a rough experience. Around here, and at my alma mater, there are procedures for allowing non-students and even people who are not affiliated with the university to use school resources. As I said, as you apparently failed to read, employees are even allowed to take courses for credit without paying tuition.
I really do not see much point in continuing this discussion with you, since you are not even bothering to read what I am writing.
You are clearly intending to take something of value, something that is not free, something that costs actual money, that doesn't belong to you for your own personal gain
Something I already have access to and for which my access is not restricted by location or time. There is nothing in any agreement or law that says I have to be physically on university property to use their wireless connection.
Theft
Theft of what? I already have access to the university wireless network and I am allowed to use it whenever I want. How is using it from my house theft?
Now... consider that every IT staffer is doing the same thing as you. Doesn't work.
I'd have fired you for even asking.
If I had a fascist boss who fired people for asking if they are allowed to do something I would quit -- if I had made the mistake of even accepting a job at such an establishment.
Do your damn job
Is there some reason you think I am not doing my job?
stop trying to leverage your employer's resources for your own personal gain.
Right, I should not use resources that I am entitled to use. Maybe you do not understand this, but I am under the same network usage agreement as the thousands of people who live on this campus and use the network as their primary Internet connection. Employees of this university routinely log on to banks' websites, social network sites, youtube, and a variety of other not-work-related systems using the school's connection -- nobody is breaking any rules by doing so.
Moreover, there are plenty of university employees who use university resources for their hobbies. Most of the members of the HAM radio club are university employees, and they use equipment and electricity that is all owned and paid for by the university -- and they are doing so with the university's blessing. University employees are entitled to take courses without paying tuition. The university does not limit access to its resources to the undergraduates, and the mission here is not to squeeze every penny of profit out of every resource.
Geeks are not even in agreement on technical issues, so how can you expect a candidate that would be good for "geek issues?" Half of /. supports net neutrality as a way to protect the spirit and nature of the Internet, and half oppose it as yet another regulation that will lead to handouts to entrenched interests at the expense of everyone else. There are people who support the interests of the copyright lobby, and people who oppose them. There are free software supporters, and people who think the GPL is a bad thing. Any number of candidates might be supported by the general geek community.