Life on The Net in 2004 554
NewtonsLaw writes "In recent years the Net has changed very quickly from a great place for geeks and nerds into a highly commercialized marketplace in which everyone is making a grab for your wallet. If it's not wave after wave of spam in your mailbox, it's excessively intrusive ad banners and popups, or demands by websites that you pay a subscription for access.
The DMCA and other pending legislation could soon mean that companies such as Microsoft and the recording labels will cement their total ownership of your online rights -- leaving you with nothing but a hefty bill to pay whenever you want to use their software or services.
Today's Aardvark Daily carries an interesting editorial that speculates on just what life could be like in the very near future. Sobering -- but perhaps not too far from reality?"
"Geeks"? :) (Score:4, Informative)
Hint: disable javascript, edit your /etc/hosts file to map various interesting domain names to 127.0.0.1, and don't use an idiotic mail client that eagerly executes scripted content.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. [wirex.com]
Immunix: [immunix.org] Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase [wirex.com]
Re:PopUp Killer (Score:2)
It's on my website..get the UPDATED version. It uses a Key Stroke Combination that you choose to disable popups. Hit F1, popups ggo away, F1 again, they appear.
Have fun
Oy, I cannot compete (Score:3, Funny)
Fnord, man... Fnord.
-B
It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:4, Insightful)
Free software happens to empower the buyer and enables more than one seller, hence, it is a very pro-capitalism and pro-market proposition. While it may be true that a single entity may not be able to extort monopolist prices to the determinent of the buyer, it also generally true that a more competitive market with multiple suppliers is generally better both for the quality of goods supplied and the total size of the market. This is real capitalism. This is free software!
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2, Insightful)
LOL... no.
Microsoft got rich because IBM marketed the best, and later because it abused the monopoly power that consumers gave to it earlier in its corporate life.
That's the facts, jack. MS wouldn't be where it is right now if it hadn't been along for the ride with the IBM PC. They were in the right place at the right time. Are you going to tell me that people bought PC's for MS-DOS?
Now they've realized in recent years what exactly it is that they control, and since they've got everyone by the balls with the Windows platform, they can play all the games they want with their customers.
That's the problem with a monopoly; they don't have to give a damn to make a profit. Hence why we have antitrust legislation.
"Big-bidness" mindslaves like yourself are just funny; how exactly do you think submitting yourself to MS's corporate dominance will reap rewards in the long run?
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2)
Win9X broke lots of DOS software.
Win2K broke lots of Windows software.
WinXP broke lots of Windows software.
If they were truly compatible, you'd see "Designed for Windows" instead of "Designed for Windows 2K" or XP or 95 or other flavour du jour.
Oh, and as for price, by "somehow", you mean usually "illegally", or restricting themselves to non-commercial.
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:5, Funny)
Sure they have good PR. They have convinced everybody that they are "heroes" for rescuing people from burning buildings, or helping out others during 9-11 but make no mistake those fuckers are union members. The teachers are always whining about underfunded schools, long hours, old books, uncaring parents, delapidated buildings as if it wasn't all their fault our educational system is all fucked up. If they would just dissolve their unions then we can pay them even less and make our schools so much better.
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you put aside your greed for one moment and think about the possibility, just the possibility, that the world doesn't have to be so fucked up.
with technology to have endless resources, (Score:2)
Its like selling air, water, etc
We'll never run out, instead of sharing we sell it
Its called greed, not capitalism, greed.
Capitalism works when you have a limited supply of something and need a way to decide who gets what, when everyone can have everything, whats the point of capitalism? Greed & Selfishness
Re:with technology to have endless resources, (Score:2)
Support personnel aren't free.
Promotional efforts aren't free.
Software developers aren't free.
Machine upkeep isn't free.
Rent isn't free.
Electricity isn't free.
Food, so that the employees can live, isn't free.
Re:with technology to have endless resources, (Score:2)
That about WRAPS IT UP for the "everything should be free" viewpoint. Until everything is free, companies have to sell products so they can pay the bills and employ people so *they* can pay their bills.
and anything worth having on-line takes TIME to produce, which also isn't free.
This is insurmountable, utopia notwithstanding. It takes zero effort to make the rent due. Food can be grown indefinitely, but it isn't free either.
Want to have some influence? Buy something from a small business instead of complaining that big businesses don't care. Want a better job? Buy something from a small business instead of griping about corporate layoffs. Small businesses create jobs.
Re:with technology to have endless resources, (Score:2)
Capitalism isn't a zero sum game. If I have fields full of wheat and you have fields full of cows, I can trade you wheat for cows, and both of us profit. We trade the lesser wealth of our excess into the greater wealth of our lack.
Swap "dollars" for "wheat" and "CDs" for "cows", and you've got today's consumer market.
"Capitalism is evil" is so 1980s--get current, man...
The same thing thats wrong with stealing,lying etc (Score:2)
Hell if i want all your stuff why dont i just take it, i mean who cares about you, I mean I'm selfish, only I matter right?
Re:Its always evil heres why (Score:2, Insightful)
Since we live in America (and I'm sure this is the case in most countries), there's nothing compelling you to pay for water. There's no laws forcing you to obtain it from the local water supply. If you prefer, you're free to collect it yourself, disinfect it and check for microbes. But I'm sure you'll find paying for someone else to do so is a far better use of your time/money.
Now that I've destroyed your simplest argument, I can safely assume that the rest of your post is just as factually oblivious.
machines do all of this (Score:2)
Why not have free water? something thats easy to produce can be taxed, meaning something which can bee done by robots or machines
paying for food, water, housing through taxes is socialism, where everything you need to survive if given to you.
Capitlaism is survival of the fittest.
survival of all vs survival of the fittest.
I choose survival of all because i dont like seeing millions die over not having water and food, etc just so some rich guy can buy a mansion.
you dont get it (Score:3, Interesting)
With the billions of people in third world countries (the majority) into the information society
Work will be much easier, robots could control everything, theres 6 billion people in the world, about 5 billion of this 6 billion are in third world countries.
if these people all put their minds together technology would LEAP, imagine us having a billion scientists instead of millions, imagine a billion programmers, this is easily possible when you bring the third world into the information based economy, give them all computers and linux, give them free books on programming, and let them in the door.
If we gave them some way to educate themselves, things wouldnt be fair, but they wouldnt have to starve anymore, they could make money.
this is why i support free information. free software, open source etc
Re:Its always evil heres why (Score:2)
Anytime you are selfish, you are keeping someone else from having what you have.
That's only true if you believe that for me to have a dollar you must lose one. While a favorite myth propagated by many leftists, it is demonstratably not true. The capitalist system, with banks, investments, loans, etc. multiplies money so that everyone can earn more money without anyone having to lose.
If you take all the water away because you are selfish, no one else can have it. If you take all the food, no one else can have any.
Well, yeah. Those are finite resources. I also have never heard of anyone owning all the food in the world. The free market would make that impossible. As the selfish water-loving, fat bastard bought more and more food the price would go up until he himself could no longer purchase anymore. He'd run out of money before he achieved his goal. Then prices would go back down and he'd be bankrupt. Problem solved.
Most americans are selfish, including you oviously
Most people are selfish, period. The great majority of people, if given the opportunity to die or let some faceless person starve to death in Ethiopia, would prefer to live. That's selfish. The question is where you draw the line, and that's subjective. Your line is no more correct than my line.
Why? Americans take over the world, and use capitalism to control all the resources while third world countries get to starve and die. This is selfishness.
We are the largest provider of international aid in the world. We give more food and money away than any other country. Go find another argument, because that one doesn't work.
Also, we didn't take over the world or use capitalism to control all the resources. We just happen to be the most efficient. And nature rewards the most efficient. Survival of the fittest.
We have more than enough food to feed them all
Who? The United States has enough food to feed the entire world? We're efficient but not THAT efficient.
and its not a money issue, its selfishness
It is, in part, a money issue. Do the math. It is financially impossible for the United States to save the entire world. We amount to about 4% of the population. Never, ever will 4 people be able to save 96. But if we try then at least we can be as poor as them... Sorry, try again.
Same with water, why the hell should we pay for water? Greed is why.
What are you talking about? Two things: 1) You are paying, in large part, for the service of having the water piped to your home. 2) There is a price on water precisely so some selfish fool can't have it all, just as you complained.
People dont want only what they need to survive, they want everything
I don't know anyone that wants EVERYTHING. After all, where would they PUT it? :Grin:
But people DO want to do better than just survive. Is that bad?
this is why alot of people are against socialism and communism, communism is about helping the majority, and socialism is about everyone being equal.
In other words, if 96 people are miserable then the other 4 should be miserable too?
Communism and socialism don't work because, as you said, they contradict fundamental human nature. They contradict nature itself.
With our technology, we could easily feed the planet, and no one would starve, no one would need water, everyone would have a place to live, and free medicine.
You're talking about utopia. You're dreaming. I hope you realize that.
Its capitalism that allows us to live in mansions, have all of the medicines, and the best food, its also what pisses everyone in third world countries off
Yeah, they're pissed off because they want it (i.e. they're selfish too) but they don't have it. Unfortunately, most of the barriers in third world countries are their local governments themselves. Don't blame the U.S., blame the local dictators.
People in africa, china, afganastan, and other co untries hate us because we are greedy.
Most people in Africa could give a damn about the U.S. They're not that interested in global politics.
The people in China hate us because their totalitarian government brainwashes them with communist propaganda, not because of anything we've done to them.
Afghanistan hates us for religious reasons and because we just bombed the hell out of them.
If you poll the America-hating world why they hate us I'm sure you'll get plenty of reasons... but I doubt "selfish" is going to be near the top of the list.
We take everything and give nothing.
Oh, like the billions of dollars of foreign aid that we provide. Like the thousands of ton of grain we ship to poor countries. Like the advances in technology and medicine that, despite not being accesible universally, have helped billions of people worldwide.
Come 'on, you yourself can't be buying what you're selling here.
You cant take everything from everyone, and expect everyone to love you
What do we take from Africa, China, and Afghanistan? From Africa virtually nothing, except diamons from South Africa (=jobs for locals). Afghanistan, nothing (all we do is export ex-Talibans to Cuba). From China? Well we buy the stuff they produce. Sure, it's cheap, that's why we buy it. We don't FORCE them to work or sell cheap; that's more an affect of their local economic and political system.
You can expect everyone to try to be like you, even try to side with you, and become american like you, but they'll always hate you.
That sounds more like bitter envy to me. You don't try to imitiate and befriend someone you hate.
Its almost like slavery, look at the effects slavery had,. you still have black people in the USA who believe because of slavery, you were given an unfair advantage (assuming you are white) and they want some kinda payback for that.
Well, they're being selfish. They see an opportunity and are going for it. So what? I doubt they'll get much out of it, but I guess I don't blame them for trying.
So yes, theres a problem with selfishness, it creates hate,. war, etc.
No, selfishness doesn't do that. Stealing and killing people creates both hate and war. Religious differences tend to stimulate both. National pride often causes tensions.
You're off the mark. There's probably thousands of good reasons to hate us (Americans). But being selfish aint it. We're a successful and generous society.
Re:Its always evil heres why (Score:2, Flamebait)
huh? (Score:2)
Thats bullshit. I'm sorry but its just bullshit. capitalism works by making as much money as possible
companies want to make products as cheap as possible, thus there has to be poor people to make the products cheap and rich people to sell these cheap products to, thus poor = working class, rich = buying class
the working class makes just enough to survive, and not much more
the rich make more than they need to survive thus they can buy stuff they dont really need.
Third world countries = an underclass, they do slave labor for pennies,
fair? hell no!
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you mean, everyone would have an equal or nearly equal high annual income? In relative terms (compared to non-capitalist countries), yes. If you mean, "under capitalism, everyone will be a millionaire and live in a palace," no. Not unless the currency is devalued much further and housing materials and land get a lot cheaper.
Thats bullshit. I'm sorry but its just bullshit.
That's not an argument.
capitalism works by making as much money as possible
You seem to at least understand that. Before capitlism, people didn't say "make money." Money wasn't "made" before free enterprise -- the free exchange of goods among traders -- capitalism -- existed. Interesting linguistic tidbit there. It's because, unlike earlier economic systems (and some later ones), capitalism isn't a zero-sum game.
poor = working class, rich = buying class
The "poor" actually do most of the buying in any economy. Read Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital."
the rich make more than they need to survive thus they can buy stuff they dont really need.
I suppose you're qualified to make that statement. Dear egalatarian overload, waht may we purchase today? A car made my workers making above the median wage? No, it costs too much -- it's a luxury. A boat? No, it's a luxury. Etc. Tell that to the boat makers that go out of business. In the 80's, when a "luxury tax" was applied to boats, a lot of small-time boat makers went under. Did this tax "soak the rich?" Nope. It starved the poor.
fair? hell no!
What the hell is your definition of "fair?" And are you perpared to make people around you live by it? By what means?
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Hey! Good question! Hernando de Soto, in The Mystery of Capital, addresses the wealth (capital) of the poor. The "poor" in Egypt, for instance, currently possess capital worth more than the total sum of all investments, including foreign aid, ever made in Egypt. The problem is, it's dead capital. Unlike in Western market economies, average egyptians cannot convert their capital assets (e.g., housing) into liquid assets easily, or often, even legally. The laws of their country do not support private property, and therefore do not support investment ot people making money for themselves. 89% of the egyptian GDP is created in the "extralegal" sector of the economy. "Extralegal" assets are not convertible into fluid financial assets, so they are forced to trade in their own small circle, where people have their own "law" governing property and ownership.
This is one of the great and suprising discoveries that de Soto made when researching "the mystery of capital" -- that property law in the U.S., and the other Western countries, was created largely outside the government by "the poor." The reason the West, and U.S. in particular, as succeeded with capitalism and raised the living standards of its people so much faster than other regions, is that the government largely just gave into popular sentiment and codified the informal law as the actual law, then worked to make it standardized. For instance, in the U.S., the government fought farmers and miners for years, because they were ignoring the pondorous old English property law that the U.S. inherited. The settlers and prospectors worked out their own means of ownership -- and enforcement. When the feds stopped fighting them and joined them -- by passing the "Homestead Act," the American economy turned the corner and boomed (to mix a metaphor).
So, to return to the original question -- "How can the rich find a market to become richer if the customers (poor people) don't have any money to buy their stuff?" -- the answer is, "the 'poor' people have most of the money."
Ok, in africa, what do africans buy? (Score:2)
They cant even afford to buy food and medicine!!!!
So if the poor buy everything shouldnt 90 percent of all our our sales come from places like africa where the majority of the human population is?
Most buying comes from the rich, Americans, Europeans etc equal the rich.
The majority of people in this world are poor, africans, middle eastern, etc
what do they buy? they cant even afford to buy food!!!!
The rich buy more than the poor, thats the whole point of tax cut = good for the economy!
Americans believe Capitalism is perfect (Score:2)
First, Capitalism is not perfect.
Second, Capitalism is not the only answer.
Third, Capitalism turns to Socialism, we arent a true capitalist nation, we are a capitalist/socialist nation.
The diffrence between poor and rich widens so much that the poor demand to have what the rich have in order to be FAIR,
This is socialism
This is why we have taxes.
What I am saying is, we already ARE socialism, and becoming more socialist has its advantages because this is what the majority of the working class want, they want social security, health care, free public schools, etc.
Capitalism is not perfect (Score:2)
As our ecnoomy becomes information based we will become a completely socialist country, we will become more like canada.
Heres why, We will spend more and more money on schools, in an information economy, we need intelligent people to produce information, schools will gainn more and more government funding.
In a true and pure capitalist world, you have a problem with information
Poor people would have no chance at all of survival, because information has a price, with no public schools the poor would have no way off surviving in an informaiton based society, how can a poor person compete with a rich person when labor is no longer important?
Rich people always have a better education because they pay for a good education, the public school system was set up so EVERYONE could have a fair chance at success by giving everyone free education.
Socialism is about being fair, too much socialism can be unfair, so you have to be careful.
You cant just give money to the poor, you can invest money so the poor have a fair chance at becoming rich, education is the first step, and if you dont invest in better schools and become socialist, the poor people will become criminals and rob you and steal,
Theres no option, you are forced into socialism as technology reduces labor to nothingness, soon you wont be able to have a labor based career, or a mcdonalds job etc that uneducated poor people have, and in an information based society, education is everything. If its not free, then the rich will get richer, the poor will be forced to steal from the rich because the rich will control all the information in an information based economy.
Linux helps even the odds, so does open source, but this is just computers
what about everything else?
Re:Ok, in africa, what do africans buy? (Score:2)
To answer my own question, not, it is not. Should we give them cash, or food, or medicine -- or other products of our labor -- in exchange for nothing, letting their dirtbag governments improve nothing by propping up their broken, oppressive systems? No.
what do they buy? they cant even afford to buy food!!!!
What are you talking about? Are you just referring to the worst possible case -- let's see, a war-torn former dictatorship in the middle of a ten-year a famine, perhaps, to prop up whatever argument you're trying to make? What argument ARE you trying to make, anyway?
Re:Americans believe Capitalism is perfect (Score:4, Insightful)
Thsi is true. We're also the most capitalist nation. It's not an accident that we're also the richest.
First, Capitalism is not perfect.
No system is. Capitalism is the least bad. Socialism is a far cry from the least bad. I work with a Romaniam who lived there while it was a Socialist State. He said it was a joke -- no motivation to work or make improvements, etc. He went back last year and said it's much better -- "they have freer markets and a lot more stuff is available a lot cheaper."
What I am saying is, we already ARE socialism, and becoming more socialist has its advantages because this is what the majority of the working class want
... FREE STUFF!
A democracy works until the people start voting themselves other people's money.
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed, more have been killed by authoritarian anticapitalists than have been killed by any amount of capitalist inequality.
In fact, it was just your sort of attitude about capitalists that allowed for that kind of brutality in the first place. Its easy to kill people if you think there're evil.
Consider the language of the left about capitalists versus "the people." By implication, the capitalists aren't people. Atrocities against non-people become easy.
"It is important, my countrymen, to shout this to the world again and again, for they are brazen democratic liars who assert that the so-called Authoritarian States are out to conquer the world, while in fact, the conquerors of the world are our old enemies
"However, every proposal, coming as it did from me, was sufficient to cause excitement among a certain Jewish-international-capitalist clique, just as it used to happen formerly in Germany when every reasonable proposal was rejected only because it was made by National Socialists."
"But the ruthlessness of the capitalist plutocrats in these countries always broke through in a short time, fostered by emigrants who presented a picture of the German situation which was naturally quite mad, but was believed because it seemed agreeable and then, of course, it was propagated by Jewish hatred. This collection of capitalist interests on the one hand, Jewish instincts of hatred and the emigrants' lust for revenge, succeeded in increasingly beclouding the world, enveloping it in phrases, and in inciting it against the present German Reich, just as against the Reich which preceded us. At that time they opposed the Germany of the Kaiser, this time they opposed National-Socialist Germany." -- Adolf Hitler
Welcome to the world of anti-capitalism.
Yes, it has even led to anti-semitism and Nazi Germany. For the Germans, the Jews represented the capitalists. In 1930, over half of all companies and firms in Germany were owned by Jews, who made up less than 2% of the population. For Germans, Jew meant capitalist.
This was even expressed in children's books like
[calvin.edu]
Money is the God of the Jews
"This story comes from Der Giftpilz, an anti-Semitic children's book published by Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer. He was executed as a war criminal in 1946. "
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2)
You think that's bad, just wait until Standard Oil gets it's grubby little hands on your car!
Oh, wait...
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2)
"Some see things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask 'why not?'" -- Robert F. Kennedy
Re:It's called 'capitalism' (Score:2)
"What's so great about a mom and pop store? Let me tell you something, if my mom and pop ran a store I wouldn't shop there."
--George from Seinfeld
I assume that you are overestimating the mom and pop stores. You know what mom and pop did? They took all of Jerry's sneakers and skipped town!
and we will allow this to happen.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Porn? (Score:2, Funny)
We don't even have porn in 2002. Guess we got a lot to look forward to
Not me. (Score:2)
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what? Don't use their services! Those services were not there in the past and everyone survived.
Stories like this are so self defeating. What is the solution? If in fact it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to run a service (as it does now and always has) Then of course it needs to be paid for! By Who? Net fairies? No, by the users!
Just go back to e-mail and usenet. Give up the web completely. It was envisioned as a commercial vehicle from the get go. Then you can pay $19.95 a month for your dialup account and be happy as a clam never paying for another thing on the net.
Either participate or not. But this endless teeth gnashing about not getting everything in the universe for free is getting really REALLY old!
Re:So? (Score:2)
And this has nothing to do with everything being free. This has to do with comments about big companies suing small sites off the net because they don't like their content. This has to do with companies' new digital rights management software deciding whether or not I can use something that I paid for (and if it screws up, I just might go to jail because of it).
If these are things that you would like to see happen, then make your own damn network so that you can be in charge
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
While agree with most of what you said, I just can't let this go:
This is blatently wrong, and it saddens me that anyone thinks this is true. The original vision [w3.org] for the WWW, as written by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 when he came up with the concept, says that:
That said, I have little to no problem with people trying to make a buck off of it (within reason... spam is not within reason). There are still lots of great resources out there that still adhere to Mr. Berners-Lee's original vision... like /. (although B-L was thinking more of academic colaboration than geeks pontificating).
Yes, the web has become more commercialized, but that doesn't mean it started that way, and it doesn't mean it can _only_ be that way.
Limitless stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
In the past people used other services that will not survive into the future. Newspapers and other publications that once extraced timber from entire regions are going away. TV broadcast is moving to digital and encrypted pay per play if broadcasters have their way. Radio will follow. So where will you get your news and entertainment if all these greed heads have their way? People once lived in caves and they lived.
What trolls like you miss, or intentionally ignore, is the loss of public domain that all of this is leading up to. As many others have pointed out here, the DMCA can be extended to the death of all normal publications, making libraries impractical if not illegal. Newer laws that require govenment approved software in all digital devices will effectivly eliminate free publishing, so that those who WANT to give away their thoughts will not be able to. It's not that I'm worried that I won't be able to get cool toys for free, it's that I won't be able to share MY thoughts, MY programs, MY images without paying some trolls who want to control the internet and my computer.
May all your software be MicroShaft for the rest of your days, AwfulTroll.
Re:So? (Score:2)
All IBM would do would be to take their own distribution and market it including the DRM they licence from MS to business' looking for low-end server software. If hardware makers want to sell products into the US, they damn well better incorporate anything the politicians say, after all those laws were bought and paid for by "captains of industry" and "people who create jobs".
Like I've said before, "Capitalist Democracy" means a place where capitalists can buy all the democracy they want and everyone else can go pound sand.
2004 War Against Technologists (Score:4, Funny)
Narrator: Deep in the shadows and during late night hours, terrorists construct computers so they may prevent Americans the opportunity to enjoy music, film, and software.
(Display a family enjoying a movie and children listening to music)
Narrator: These terrorists are responsible for up to 30% of unemployment in our nation due to reductions in revenue for American businesses.
(Display an unemployment line and a line of Russians waiting to receive bread during the Soviet-era)
Narrator: Moreover, parts (primarily manufactured in the non-American and ugly capitalistic and piggish democractic nation of Russia) are purchased via the computer blackmarket and finance drug sales to children at schools.
(Display computers alongside dead children)
Narrator: Why would a person wish to build a computer?
(Display an individual covered by a black and dark shadow)
Narrator: Only an anti-societal and evil intention lurks in these terrorists to undermine our common courage: "one nation under god, indivisible, and united we stand."
(Display the flag of the United States of America)
Narrator: These terrorists must be reported to the Civilian Protection Team immediately! Now is the time to defend our nation! Do your part... today!
(Display a telephone and Citizen Protection Member (CPM) dressed in uniform and receiving a request from a female citizen in the foreground with the flag in the background)
Narrator 2: This message brought to you by the Council for an Evil Free America.
(Display Evil Buster Logo (TM) )
Re:2004 War Against Technologists (Score:2, Funny)
You meant Evil-Free America, right? Or, *raises eyebrow dramatically*, did you?
Re:2004 War Against Technologists (Score:3)
Re:How to fight back (Score:2)
Bah (Score:2)
Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of it is warranted but not this kind of horrid future.
There is a very good alternative to it all. Just walk away from it. I know I don't have to have email in my personal life. I don't have to have the web either. I certainly don't need the music produced by the big record companies, or the movies and t.v. shows produced by the big entertainment conglomerates.
If enough people opt out of these things- and put their energy into developing alternatives, those alternatives will thrive.
The only government that can stop that is one that does away with the very basic liberties of movement and ownership. I know- a lot of people think that is already happening but I would say not.
I'm not saying don't be concerned or take action. I just think that this dark vision of the future is a bit much.
Not to mention it completely leaves out the advances that will be made in the circumvention of these laws.
Imagine before cable t.v. someone writing a story where the draconian cable company sends you a bill- or they'll turn your t.v. off!
Some people pay and don't think anything of it.
A lot of people just steal cable.
Me- I just go without and save a lot of time that would have been wasted watching what is for the most part drivel.
.
Re:Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:2)
Me- I just go without and save a lot of time that would have been wasted watching what is for the most part drivel.
The problem is, the internet isn't supposed to *BE* drivel! The internet is (was?) a beautiful thing, and the commercialization is turning much of it into drivel. You can't say the same thing about TV, really. TV was not created in universities, fueled by academic thoughts and humor, and later "corrupted."
Re:Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:2)
You know, there's more academic content than ever before. If you don't like commercial content, don't visit the commercial sites.
Re:Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:2)
Re:Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:2)
Commercial crap like Slashdot? Or does Slashdot fall into the "acedemic" category?
Re:Just Shut it off and walk away (Score:2, Insightful)
Well to stick with the cable analogy, if television customers felt as passionately about the shows available we would have higher quality T.V. Maybe even an alternative sort of like a Linux for the idiot box. But wait, in order to do that we would need to jump all sorts of red tape, licenses etc. It's just not something that just anybody off the street can do.
Now we have a medium that is like that. I don't like the content on here, and I know that others think like I do and want to see the same thing. So I'll just start my own little web page and go take it from there. That's the beauty of the net. It's openness and resulting anarchy that is prevalent if your stray from the corporate spoon-fed television substitutes.The web really is an almost artificial world in many respects, were everybody contributes. People from Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds to everybody who posts on Slashdot add something no matter how insignificant and something is better than nothing right? Like it or not the internet is a better place even with something as small as a troll's rant.
It's ok if you don't want to dive deeper then AOL serving you MSN"S take on Brittany Spears new teeny-bopper cd, that's fine. However there is so much more, made by people all over the world who put their time, their effort to make this artificial environment made up of nothing more then silicon, solder, electrons and our thoughts. To simply walk away is just wrong. Too much collective effort has been expended to simply sit back and allow ourselves to be chained once again.
You don't believe this do you? (Score:2)
Not to mention it completely leaves out the advances that will be made in the circumvention of these laws.
DCMA, circumvention is illegal. Do it and go to jail.
What's wrong with this picture? I don't listen to radio, watch TV much less have cable, and hardly go to the movies. The advertising/content ratio passed my threshold years ago. 4 of 5 calls to my house are by agressive salespeople. I'd like to chop my land line, but I know the same people will find my cell phone. My snail mail is composed entirely of junk mail and bills. I can't do so much as walk down the street without being assaulted by a 30 foot tall pop star billboard. Oh, that's right, people are making all means of communications useless with comercial agression. Oh yes, I pay handsomly for all of it. The phone bill is outrageous, the cable modem bill is a joke for a "service" with blocked ports and a ToS that is essentially, browse at our descresion, and we all pay for those billboards and those adverts on TV and Radio in the price of basic living needs. Even the electric company puts adverts on TV, what a waste of public money!
Have you used a Microsoft platform lately? It's just like the article describes, less some of the cost. You will, of course, provide a credit card for for your unilaterally modifiable license to browse, to subscribe to your favorite news site, etc ad nauseum. If Hollings has his way and kills free software, we will all suffer this. Remember paying money to the cable company for advert free entertainment? Here we are now! The lowest of the publishers are trying to set the rules for all future publication including what you type on your computer.
Let 'em charge per use (Score:2)
I'm a coder, but I don't like having to configure all my hardware and deal with endless conf files and what-not (read: software person, not hardware). BUT, if I start getting charged everytime I reboot, I will configure whatever the hell I have to. I will not tolerate my rights being trampled by charge happy corporations.
I currently use OS X, and I think it's great, but if Apple started charging a monthly fee for it's use, I would drop it like a hot potato. I think many people would do the same. Think if Ford charged you every time you started your car. A lot of people would take the bus...
Re:Let 'em charge per use (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, there are already a lot of people buying their automobiles by the mile. It's the most expensive way to go, but they are seduced by the low "down" and lease payments that are a bit smaller than they would pay if they purchased instead of leasing.
Microsoft is obviously considering this model for software.
Re:Let 'em charge per use (Score:2)
/. Asleep at the Wheel - AGAIN (Score:2, Insightful)
Compare it to McDonald's, which is really in the real estate business, NOT necessarily profiting from fast food. The same is coming true for Microsoft - Windows is simply a vehicle to intellectual property rights.
Re:/. Asleep at the Wheel - AGAIN (Score:2)
I see one of four things happening (Score:4, Interesting)
2) The internet turns into tv + shopping. Lots of ads you can't get past
3) The internet gets so bad, that the geeks create decentralised, efficient, free-floating network partially on top of the existing network, partially outside of it, and it all begins again
4) It goes on exactly like it is now. the (x)AAs of the world keep trying to hold us down, the advertisers keep trying to make us look, MS keeps trying to make us pay (again), and we keep trying to stay one step ahead of them all. This is IMHO the most likely situation.
Anything a geek can create... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything a geek can create, a politician can legislate against.
A political problem doesn't cry out for a technological solution... but we're not politicians. We're geeks.
Re:I see one of four things happening (Score:2)
I'd like to see this happen, I really would, but the onlye geek-friendly p2p program atm is freenet, which is about as useful as a cardboard cup without wax lining... It works at first, but after a while it won't hold water. And the good people at kazaa will likely ruin it for everybody else wrt p2p as it stands. Two days ago it took me about 10 reboots and a lot of fscking around including booting into safe mode to figure out that the reason my pc was hanging at bootup was because of GMT.exe. Whatever it was trying to do (no idea) was hanging the machine. If it does it to me it'll do it to other people too.
Re:I see one of four things happening (Score:2, Informative)
Theres a way to change the future (Score:2)
http://www.thelinuxshow.com/otc.htm
The open technology movement.
Go to that site and donate, your donation will be used to help create a lobbying group to congress,
If you dont have money to donate, if you are on a campus, host a rally, make posters, find ways to raise money and then donate.
Not buying only exacerbates the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it is just a donation, and you don't want the product, $10 can mean a great deal to a small company. If all of the startups and small web businesses become cautionary tales, then the future WILL be 10 mega-corporations.net, and minimum wage for everyone else, because it will be impossible to construct a competitive business model. Customers vote with their dollars.
If people don't want to buy from Big Company Inc., fine, just remember that Very Little Company Inc. can't lay off thousands of people to preserve their capital (if they had any to start with).
But the "I'll never buy anything" approach means that the big corporations win by default, because nobody supports their competition. Not everyone who plugs in a cash register is greedy.
It affects employment too. Big corporations are great for executives, but the guy with the mortgage and three kids is going to have at least one devastating ($10,000 in expenses or more) layoff in their career REGARDLESS of their qualifications, achievements or seniority. Wouldn't happen if he had a little cabinet making company (on-line or off) with a few dozen paying customers.
Just a thought.
Why mess around with this "buying" nonsense? (Score:2)
Don't waste it on middlemen. Just give it to them. That way, they can just work on making better stuff for you and not waste their time working out a more complicated revenue model.
Note: this applies equally well to everything from software to music to movies... any information product, any scale. Take a quarter what you're spending to buy information products, donate that to the same people and pocket the rest, and they'll still make twice as much money because restricted distribution is ridiculously expensive.
Show the polititians (Score:2)
"Stop!!! You can't write on that paper!" when they ask why not,
"Because that paper has been copy protected so it can only be used by the copywrite holder."
Then they would say "But I bought the paper",
reply "but by agreeing to the license agreement, you gave the copywrite holder the permission to claim that paper and you, by law, can do nothing about it."
I bet that might get thier attention.
Of course I'm only dreaming...would never happen.
If ignorance is bliss, then the world is full of blissfull people
A rewrite on the life of a pirate in 2004 (Score:5, Funny)
_____________________________________________
It's 6:30am some day in 2004.
The alarm goes and you rise from your bed to face the day's challenges.
After a quick shower and breakfast you wander over to your PC and check to see if any email has arrived overnight.
Hmm... 231 new emails but procmail say that 217 of those are likely to be spam. Even though they've cp'ed dropped into another folder you'll still have to wade through them to make sure that you don't miss an important message that might have been accidentally sidetracked by the less-than-perfect software. But, you still rm -rf them...
Damn, it looks as if you've also received 5 new virus/trojan attachments as well and one of them was 20MB in size -- that's another $4 on your DSL bill.
Suddenly a pop-up dialog box, through emulation by Wine, appears advising you that there are 2 new Windows Security updates that should be downloaded, totalling some 60MB in size (another $12 worth of traffic). You block the server in HOSTS, as so your Windows emulation doesn't tattle on you.
Within seconds, the PC's desktop comes alive with pop-up flashing, animated advertising banners -- you proceed to kill Mozilla you hacked to use with the newer, propeirty html'like protocol. You start up lynx.
Another dialog box pops up, this time warning you that the license for your copy of Windows XP2004 is due to expire in 10 days. You run the registry crack within linux so the emulation dll's will still work.
Fond memories of the days when there were alternatives to Microsoft's OS pass through your mind -- but that was before the government realised that software was like petrol -- a totally essential commodity in the lives of most businesses and individuals. Legislation was passed in 2003 that required all software developers and vendors to be licensed and a 45% tax added to all sales. However, in China, they realised that everything revolved around freely accessible software. China has changed in all thier practices, as to make thier ideal commuinist regime a very livable place for free people. Of course, much to Microsoft's glee, this killed the Open Source from being supported by companies in the US. You howver, bought a black marked copy of DRM linux. This software exploits bugs within the hardware. Of course, having the PCI64 (bought in Korea) anti-drm card has made this much easier
You type in "cnn.com" then enter the ID and password associated with your monthly subscription. Remember when there were hundreds of sites offering the latest news for free? Not any more. Sure, there still a few, but they're regularly hit with law suits by the big names who allege breach of copyright. Although such suits are inevitably dismissed -- the cost of defending them means that the independent news sites usually only last a few months at most. SO you hop onto freenet and use the strange lists of characters that somehow, somewhere lead you to slashdot.
Flicking the remote beside you kicks your digital music player into action and you marvel that 5% of its computing power is dedicated to the sophisticated digital rights management system it contains. You inwardly cheer, as your newly bought anti-drm card with DRM linux does work.
Following an unsuccessful attempt to copy-protect CDs, the recording industry forced everyone to a new mini-CD format that has yet to be cracked (although there are rumours that some Russians have succeeded). You just can't buy music on CDs anymore and the old CDR/RW media now costs $10 a disk, thanks to the $9 anti-piracy levy that was introduced in 2003. Since, the US put levies on anti-'capitalism' countries, you carry removable drives with your required software and movies on them.
Another warning appears -- "Your license for this recording has expired, unable to play." Damn -- another $49 if you want to listen to that music for another year. You then erase them, as you have all your music backed up on steel tape. You wonder, if as they claim, these new measures significantly reduce piracy, why music is now so much more expensive? "It's because of people libe me", you say under your breath.
You type up a quick email to a friend, inviting them to meet you for lunch. As to attract governmental idiots, so they use thier time on a nobody like yourself, you post as your signature the following words:
I will Bomb aeroplane shit damn nuke EMP fire death murder poison buy pirate warez mp3 ogg gpg
After all, every single bit that enters and leaves your PC is now scanned by the authorities -- under the premise that it is in the interests of (inter)national security and crime reduction. I'll make sure to be here at 4 am tomorrow, as they'll make YET another raid. They won't find a thing.
It's funny how they can supposedly detect even an unfriendly tone in an email but they can't (or won't) stop the endless tide of spam isn't it?
Suddenly your PC's screen clears and the image of a naked woman in a seductive pose appears. Oh no, more of those shlopenglaurs whatsits. You see wht pid it's running, and kill it with -9
For a moment a smile crosses your face -- you're thinking of the "good old days" when the Internet was a much simpler, saner, safer place. Instead, you live on the edge of piracy, illegitimacy. You are a hacker.
Then you return to reality with the realisation that it's just 7:05am and the sucker's accound you hacked already spent $264.
_______________________________________________
As a last note, I used this article without permission (I see this differently than normal slashdot cut/paste jobs). So I give full permission to aardvark.co.nz to use my article (even if it makes money (heh, like thats going to happen, but still...)
CARRIER LOST....
Geek Minority (Score:4, Insightful)
But let's be honest here... if 50% of America has Internet access -- a good 140 some million people -- it's a safe bet that a minority of those 140,000,000 are "geeks" or "nerds." The net reflects what people online demand. If 90% of surfers were "nerds," I'm sure we'd see it slanted the other way.
I'm not much into programming anymore and I'm done with Linux. I'm a non-programming OS X user now but I come to Slashdot every day (more than once a day) because I love this community... but I also have demands for CNN.com, Macintouch.com, Apple.com, guitar websites, TheOnion.com, Yahoo Finance, Google, and so on... and none of those are "geek locations."
I think the net is just how I like it. In fact, it's close to how anyone likes it! The net's very adaptive because it's distributed. Like democracy, it shifts to what the majority want and allows space for the minority, too (though sometimes slowly).
Sensationalist FUD (Score:2)
This is the most ridiculous article I've read in a while.
Yes a lot of sites are going to subscriptions for premium content, but there are, and always will be, THOUSANDS of sites out there that offer free content, or at least some free content with premiums for those who subscribe.
Yes popup ads are annoying. But who among us is so dumb as to not know how to disable these things?
And yes, MS has gotten a lot of people into a chokehold and continues to offer inferior products at outrageous prices. But damnit people, we have ALTERNATIVES.
As bleak as this future is, it's the future for those who are uneducated and unsophisticated enough to fall for the idiocy that these businesses push. Those of us with two brain cells to rub together will always be able to find alternative sources of news/information/software.
And in my final rant of the hour, the DMCA is a US law. Believe it or not, it doesn't apply to the entire world, and one would hope that the rest of the free world can grasp the fact that some of us do indeed have a seperate legal system.
Re:Sensationalist FUD (Score:2)
Yes, the USA might not be the rest of the world, but we are a major player. Taiwan and China will put DRM in if its the only way to sell hardware to Americans. Why will they build 2 versions of the hardware, with and without DRM? They wont, its cheaper to build 1 version.
The world has allot of global players, and they all work with US corporations. Don't kid yourself, what happens to America rubs off on you. Russian citizens being arrested by America, CIA funding the Afghanistan's freedom fighters, FBI installing sniffing software for England, IBM financing Cisco to install logging firewalls for China.
Wake up,
Most Americans don't care what their government is doing, reminds me of the germans under hilters rule, they are only doing it to proctect the citizens, right?
-
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. - unknown
Digital peer networks subvert attempts to control (Score:2)
The next generation peer networks are going to make all of this a moot point. Large, fully decentralized open source peer networks have no point of centralized vulnerability to law suits or attack. They have no corporate owner to go after. They are written by the people, for the people, and nothing will be able to stifle their use to share and distribute digital information.
The RIAA/MPAA and other content industries know this, and are pushing for the only possible way to thwart this inevitable digital bazaar by using extreme legislation (SSSCA and co) to restrict general purpose computing and networking devices.
They will fail. The coming years will bring ever more resilient, secure, efficient, and useable peer networking software to accomplish everything from file sharing to colloborative development, distributed processing & storage, etc.
This is one of the few situations where the individual has the capability to fight back and win against the vested interests of the powers that be to restrict freedoms and profit from it.
World IP Organisation ... (Score:4, Informative)
A bunch of legal scholars spearheaded a counter-essay competition to reflect less sanguine views (http://www.wipout.net/essays.html)
It will be interesting to compare the results.
This sounds familiar... (Score:2, Insightful)
Kind of like Slashdot is doing?
Yawn (Score:2)
And $12 for 60MB of traffic? Puhleeeeeeze. 60MB on cheap DSL (512k) represents about 17 minutes of download time. If it was say 10 GB I might believe $12. And bandwidth usage charges tend to be on the upload side, rather than the download side. Moreover, despite the overdramatic exagerration of the current afflictions of online activity it misses almost completely the true dangers possible with new trends in computing and networking. Spam, pop-ups, viruses, and costly operating system releases are a circus side show, nothing more.
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Informative)
Xtra is NZ's biggest ISP and is run by NZ Telecom which has a monopoly on DSL. It's DSL pricing is here [xtra.co.nz] ($NZ):
60MB at their excess charge (18c/MB after 500MB) is NZ$11
The "axis of evil" is not going to win (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a doubt, the legal aspects of this will be every bit as bad as the article suggests. However, there is a big difference between having laws and enforcing them. In the 2004 scenario, practically everyone who owns a computer will be violating somebody's license or patent. The legal system may very well drown in it's own filth.
Considering how Napster was launched by a few low-budget geeks, imagine what might happen with serious opposition. I have often heard about the open source movement being the "Viet Cong" of the software world. Using laws to control a guerilla force is not going to be effective. If gun control doesn't stop criminals from using guns, I don't see how SSSCA is going to fare any better with computers. Surely, some people will be intimidated, but the Internet will simply become more encrypted and private. Historically, the Russians have been among the world leaders in dealing with repressive regimes. They are especially well suited for the Microsoft-Disney-Hollings world. Dimitry Sklyarov may very well have the last laugh after all.
The 2004 article presumes that the bad guys have achieved a total victory. The same mentality would have predicted a British victory in the American revolution, and a US victory in the Vietnam war. Goliath doesn't always win.
On the surface, it looks like Microsoft, RIAA, and Disney are a dominant force because they have money. We can assume that money will buy custom-crafted legislation (DMCA, SSSCA, and whatever Hollings is told to produce). But the advantage ends there. If you think about the brainpower aspect of this battle, a finite number of software professionals will have to outsmart an almost limitless number of guerilla hackers -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Every time the hackers get lucky, the "axis of evil" loses millions of dollars. The reason why Micrsoft is being hacked and embarrassed on a daily basis is not because they are dumb, it's because they are outnumbered.
We can't afford to be complacent, but this battle is by no means over.
Re:The "axis of evil" is not going to win (Score:2, Interesting)
A particular subset of this scenario is the DirecTV war on satellite TV piracy. They benefit from the same laws we are discussing. The piracy community was very friendly, very sharing at first, much like the open source community is now. It even overlaps, or at least used to (check out the open source app pitou, on surceforge... got shut down due to DMCA). However, as the heat has turned up, the community is growing ever smaller, more unscrupulous. No one trusts anyone enough to talk to new people about it. Hardware dealers are being busted left and right. They're profiteering, more often than not, and I can't even be sympathetic to them for that reason. It is a dying community. Buying hardware outside of the US isn't possible, it's US-centric. DirecTV is introducing a new access card, even more formidable than the last (the 4th generation "p4" card). It's very difficult to crack a new card, even the HU (or "p3" card) hasn't been fully cracked yet (this is after several years of trying). The only reason the piracy can exist at all, is because they haven't phased out the H or p2 card yet. In another 2 months, that will be corrected. Within 12 months, even the HU/p3 will be gone. The only way that any of this can be accomplished in a timely fashion, is if dozens/hundreds of people can provide their own bit of expertise in a collaborative enviroment, without a ludicrous amount of interference.
When that interference increases, you're more likely to see the seedy characters and profiteers, and less likely to see people just sharing.
I actually think I know how to fix most of the problem myself, but I need someone to bounce ideas off of. No way to talk to anyone, in a safe enviroment, no one to help me. My method would eliminate an access card black market, that some people make small fortunes off of... the same people who more often than not tend to have the expertise I spoke of. Right now, they are busy making wads of cash, selling a temporary, dangerous to hardware method... having abandoned the easy/safe/semi-permanent method as soon as DirecTV gave them the opportunity. And it is only getting worse.
Within 6 months, there will be no sharing community left at all. It will be gone. If anything exists after that, it will be the odd hacker figuring it all out on his own, and never letting anyone know... maybe 5 or 6 across the entire nation? If you think this can't happen to you, you are mistaken. All the problems the article illustrates, you dismiss as a technical problem. Normally, that would impress me, I'm much like that myself. But when they make it illegal, in every single way, I'm willing to bet, that few will risk it, when the stakes are so high. Then the community shrinks. Which makes those still in it, stand out more, and the heat rises. Which makes more quit... it will get ugly. You may laugh it off, but I'm scared to death.
Before you judge me, know that I don't condone DirecTV broadcasting signals onto my property, and trying to prosecute me for doing something with them. They paid how many millions in licenses, to a natural resource that by birth, we all own a part of. While, me, I could never hope to "own" even a small part of it myself. They charge people to watch tv, then cram commercials down their throat. Meanwhile, all the corps that used to at least provide some free broadcast tv, water it down, to make their cable and satellite divisions more profitable. While they broadcast substandard HDTV signals, so that they can carve up their bandwidth for cellular and other lucrative markets, despite the fact they were allocated double bandwidth for the express purpose of phasing in HDTV. I don't feel in any way guilty, if I watch the Star Trek on the clean pirated digital channel, instead of watching the impossible to recieve "so fuzzy every other word is 'shzzshtitgrrrr' static" broadcast channel.
Re:The "axis of evil" is not going to win (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, they can always stop broadcasting their signal to him... he's not breaking into the transmitting facility to do it, you know.
Re:The "axis of evil" is not going to win (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a nice idea, but it's not gonna happen. If it gets to the point where everybody who uses a computer is violating some obscure law, then all that does is give the authorities the ultimate powers of selective prosecution. Play along with them, and they'll ignore your little pecadillos. Do anything to piss them all, and they'll have every ability to drop the hammer on you just as hard as they feel like.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Ayn Rand
Or, to put it more contemporarily:
Agent Smith: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.
Neo: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger
DRM exists now (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe DRM is closer than you think.
-
chmod +a rwx
The Internet Doesn't Exist in a Vaccum (Score:3, Insightful)
The internet does not exist in a vaccum, it is used by millions of people.
Technology is not just a monolithic product, and attempts to make it so will doubtlessly backfire. If the US government mandated ridiculous standards, what that did in the US would NOT necessarily affect the rest of the world. One could also kiss some exports goodbye.
The various 800-lb Gorillas in technology are NOT on the same side, and they've got other factions nipping at their heels as well. Take a look at the new Gateway commericals that emphasize CD ripping for just one example . .
It is also assumed people are sheep. The problem being of course everyone assumes OTHER people are sheep while they of course are independent and free-spirited. Take a look at the spambusting, the popupkillers, DCSS, etc. People have been rebelling against this crap for some time.
Would some people like the 'net this way? Definitely. Will it happen? The fact we already have stories like this tells me probably not.
Web Site subscriptions?!? (Score:2)
Well, let's hold him to it. (Score:2)
My guess is that there will still be free news sites, and that DSL bandwidth will still be unmetered, and that there will still be free software.
But that doesn't make for much of a story, does it?
Nature of the Net (Score:3, Insightful)
What nodes do I connect to? I connect to
For me, the net is better than it was in the past. Free Software is taking off and SourceForge provides an incredibly service in hosting so much of it. As far as I'm concerned, things are just fine. BTW, I use Mozilla and run Linux so the only time I hear of Email Virii are when the people at work start bitching. At least it gives me a chance to recommend Linux to people
Really though, what sites do people find all this crap on? If I went to site that pop-up'd an automated d/l, I simply would stop going to it. If it offends you so much, why to you continue to go to it?
While this brings lots of hits to Aardvark.com (Score:4, Insightful)
What are they going to do, format your hard drive if you connect with an older version of windows? of Linux?
Oh yeah, and of course IBM, Sun, HP, and all those vendors with other OSes besides MS are going to let them get a state mandated desktop OS.
The government would NEVER pass a low outlawing development of software. That would be struck down for anti-free speech rules easy.
Oh yeah, European Union? Canada? They're gonna stand for it? Right. People emigrating from the US so they can use a computer. Whee.
plus, every self respecting geek on the planet would quit working on computers, and the whole frickin internet would collpase in a day.
Paper MCSE's can't run the internet.
Re:While this brings lots of hits to Aardvark.com (Score:3, Insightful)
What are they going to do, format your hard drive if you connect with an older version of windows? of Linux?
No. You won't be ABLE to connect, because the protocols will all be secret and propietary - and if you "hack" them, you will go to jail.
Maybe it will not be as bad as this article predicts - but only if people like yourself wake up and put some pressure on Congresscritters to quit coming up with these insane laws like the DMCA and the SSSCA (or whatever DoubleSpeak they renamed it)
This illustrates the "micropayment" fallacy nicely (Score:4, Interesting)
When people set their mandatory micropayment prices, they'll do it to maximize profit. The prices will find and sit at the awareness threshold of users, so you'll look up and see you've spent $5 over the course of a few minutes without really noticing it. People will respond to this by thinking of internet use as an expensive activity, and keeping it to a minimum. The reduced demand will drive prices up higher.
That's a natural consequence of each entity setting the prices of what their selling. Information doesn't compete on price very well. I forget who said it... "Information wants to be free, because it's so easy to distribute, yet information wants to be expensive, because it's so useful." When the people owning the information set the price, they can make it expensive, because it takes a fairly high price before it's better than not having the information.
However, voluntary micropayments don't have this tendency, being set by the users. Ultimately, I think voluntary payments will win out in any area with a sufficiently clued-in audience to make it work. The competitive advantages of free information are obviously huge, so wherever they can make enough profit to develop a comparable product to the restricted information, they'll win. Also, voluntary micropayments are much simpler and cheaper to implement.
I've written a bit [buskpay.com] on the kind of systems that would be needed (and can fairly easily be developed) to replace intellectual property restrictions, and I've done some work developing parts of them (see my sig).
get scared, get mad, get prepared (Score:2, Interesting)
A free economy does not suppose a free people. Even an economy in which one thinks he is free may not be free. A government is supposed to serve it's people and corporations are supposed to serve their customers.
Please indulge my imagination for a moment. Pretend that corporations have been merging for long enough that only two remain, the civil service provider and the corporate service provider. *eerie music* The Final Merger. Now turn both concepts into one and you have Service Commerce. You are provided everything. The opportunity to spend money, the opportunity to have your garbage collected. The opportunity to get higher education so you can be an engineer or an art major.
What you are not provided is the ability to choose who provides you these services. You don't get to choose the popups you see, they just popup. You don't have the option to get free information, you must subscribe. Since the advent of Service Commerce the head CEO's and execs now own roughly 80% of the world's money while the rest of us all get paid the same regardless of duties.
Then consider that instead of being fired, bad workers are just put into the correctional work force where they no longer even choose whether they will watch a particular commercial or speak a certain way. Those on the outside may still opt out but are none the less hurded through the Service Commerce machine.
My point is that all the common intrusive examples - spam, popups, subscriptions - posed by this article are no more the root problem of this orwellian prophesy than run down housing tenaments and squalid living conditions are the root problem of inner city violence. They merely reflect the state of the organization.
So what can we do? Simple, we can know. We can get educated. We can know our rights. We can vote not because it's just one vote but because we are allowed to. We can realize that we are consumers and we DO vote EVERY DAY. For all those who have already expressed their vote for linux and the Open Source community, wonderful, you've already started to make a difference and you know it and you are proud.
If you use linux for any of the same reasons as I do I can bet you are a perfectionist of sorts, perhaps a rebel, iconoclastic even and desire complete and full knowlege and control of your computer. Now realize that you have the same power to control your government, the people that put arsenic in your drinking water, BHG in your food and carbon monoxide in your air. Go vote at the next school board election, go rant at the next city buget proposal, write your congress people, write an editorial, join a peace rally, join a hate rally. Let your own voice be not heard, but affective (yes affective, not effective). Get mad. Go vote.
Soon there will be only silence (Score:2)
Entertainment is not essential (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't stand most of the crap out there, so I don't buy it. I don't buy CDs or DVDs anymore, I don't go out to movies or rent them, I don't buy pay-per-view or subscribe to premium cable channels, etc. (and I don't download any of this stuff either). Instead of producing something I would want to buy, the companies that produce this junk complain about piracy, as if I would even take their crap for free. Unfortunately, they have the money and power to make it more difficult to avoid their products (and avoid paying for them).
Despite all of this, I'm not too worried about the future described in the article. It's not that I don't see it as being likely, I just don't see it being impossible to avoid. If I don't pay today's prices for music, I won't pay high subscription fees. If web sites start charging more than they're worth, I'll go elsewhere or just go without. I base my purchasing decisions on quality, and that won't change with electronic services.
Of course, I have one secret weapon to fall back on if I have to abandon all else. Over the past few years, I have accumulated hundreds of books, at an average price of about 5 cents each. When all else fails, I'll just sit down and read (well, read more actually). And yes, Fahrenheit 451 is in there...
Damned thing is. . . (Score:2)
I mean hell, an ORGANIZED security attack upon the infostructure of the commercial entities operating on the net, not to mention various companies that have chosen to foolishly put all of (or the majority of) their assets (employee records and such) online or on to internet routable machines would ensure a quick and swift victory over the forces of commercialism.
Of course too many potential Nerds have been taken in by the false dreams of big business and their promises to middle manage everything to perfection. The fact that VBscript is considered a 'language on the way up' is evidenced of this.
The darned thing is that an organized attack from both the inside and the outside of companies could easily either take them down or dehabilitate them for a long enough period of time to allow for open source alternatives to take a foothold. Even complete system backups would be a bit hard to retrieve if all of a companies assets had just been invested, say, Russian plutonium mines.
It is not that hard to get an agent on the inside of even a company like Microsoft either. Once access to the internal network has been gained a good deal of the security is gone, granted while I am sure that MS has good security inside of their compound itself, the fact is that a dedicated agent COULD and CAN gain complete or near complete control over their systems.
Hell Microsoft takes on numerous interns every year, often times in tech support or repair roles. Even an office lackey would have significant freedom of movement over a designated area.
Surely one or two just out of highschool Nerds can be found who have social engineering skills of some sort and reside nearby an Microsoft compound? It is not like MS has just one (though the largest goal of Redmond should of course be kept in mind.)
The the main issue at heart is really the lack of consensus amongst internet Nerds in general. Far too many have been brainwashed by the propaganda put out by the big businesses. Hell look at how many people (even on
Until we gain regain our consensus over such simple and in the past considered trivial issues, we will not be able to unite against the forces of those that oppose us, and in fact it could be said that those that oppose us are indeed the ones who have fragmented our groupings to begin with.
In a day in age where code can be measured in millions of lines, is it no wonder that the great society of Nerds that had been built up is so quickly falling?
We had taken (have taken, past or present. . . . and hopefully not into the future) too much pride in our creations, we tried to show them to the world, but then when they would not look we committed one of the ultimate mistakes, we tried to appeal to their greed.
We said not how computers could make life easier for all, but rather how they could 'increase worker productivity'. We said not how cancer could be cured, but rather how upgrade cycles could be created so that an industry could spring up designed soley to leech off of the artificially created need of the very market of which it had created.
And when they did not listen, nay, when they did not understand that which we had created was none less then a work of art, we instead lowered not but itself, but ourselves along with it, down to the levels of mere machinations by selling our creations off as thus. We have created our own end, and if that end is to be adverted we must create our own new beginning.
The hobbyist BBS is where it's at. (Score:4, Informative)
A friend of mine once put it this way: if places like Disneyopolis, MSN, and America Online compose the roar of the information highway, then your favorite friendly BBS could be likened to the corner pub where the locals gather.
Therefore I challenge each and every one of you to quit whining about what a commercial cesspool the mainstream Web has become, and go find your niche. Locate a BBS you like (I'd be thrilled if you chose mine, but there are lots of good ones out there) and log in daily. Become a part of the community. Meet people. Chat about whatever's on your mind: media, politics, sports, weather, relationships, technology, pets... it's all out there, and the sites operated by hobbyists are completely below the radar of corporate greed.
It's up to you. Don't like Disney's version of the 'net? Neither do I. Come join us in a place where they won't bother you.
Keep looking! (Score:3, Insightful)
The best way to avoid commercialism is to avoid places which attract lots of "customers". Find a website out of the way, find a good niche, and you can even get out of the way of commercialism altogether.
In 2004, I hope to have my game finished, but I doubt it.
finally, remember that commercialism is enevitable when the common man enters any arena. These are the sheep which make the spice girls and britany spears moneymakers.It's probably best to find another haven; once the masses enter, the leeches follow.
This Isn't Fantasy - It's Reality (Score:5, Interesting)
The ACCC is fighting to make Region Encoding of DVDs illegal in Australia - claiming that it's an anti-competitive trade practice.
I browse with images off as often as possible, because images cost ten times as much as the article they're obscuring. Spam costs me money. Running "apt-get upgrade" on my Debian box will cost me about $3-$10, depending on how much "woody" has changed in the last fortnight.
Opening Internet Explorer costs me money because it insists on redirecting me to the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 home page and claiming that I really, really should download this new version of IE.
Thanks to spam, "postcards", NTP, scheduled IMAP checks and other non-interactive traffic, I can easily spend $1/hour when I'm sleeping. I don't even have to check my mail in the morning to start racking up the bills.
You people in the USA are living in a market-share-broadening dreamland, where providers are tripping over each other in an attempt to get you signed up to their networks. They all realise that once you've been using their service for 6 months "for free", they can start charging for traffic, and you'll just roll over and accept it like the good consumer-sheep you are.
In any Capitalist economy, you have to keep repeating this holy mantra - "The money has to come from somewhere. There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Pre-commercial Internet wasn't exactly Paradise (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes! Before everyone else showed up, the Net was this fantastic Geek Heaven, where all things were possible. You could download naughty pictures from the Delft University sever. You could engage in endlessly stimulating MUDs with fellow dungeon-crawling geeks. You could send e-mail! Hell, you could even use Gopher to snag files. It was Heaven on Earth!
Snap out of it! There was no Slashdot (founded in 1997, decidedly after the invasion of "other people"). There was no Gnutella. No Everquest. No online newspapers. No online banking. No ordering that hard-to find computer game or book or whatever in the dead of night when you live miles from the nearest store that carries what you're looking for.
There was less of a connection between "geeks" and "normal people", meaning that people who liked to tinker with computers were shunned far more than they are today.
It wasn't Heaven, just as this predicted 2004 won't be Hell.
Re:Nonsense! (Score:4, Funny)
Read the 2'nd? (Score:2)
Did they say "...to secure for a random time..."? No? Well, then the current copyright law that says copyrights are valid for the life of the author plus 70 years is unconstitutional. No one knows when the author is going to die, or, given the current evolution of medicine, IF he is going to die.
Did they say "...to secure to Authors' employers..."? No? Well, then copyrights held by corporations are unconstitutional.
Did they say "...to secure for actors who perform the Authors' works..."? No? Well, then paying copyrights to actors, directors, and producers is unconstitutional.
Yeah, I agree with you, let's read the good old U.S. Constitution and follow its letter and spirit!
Re:exsquize me? (Score:2)
Re:The day of BBSes will rise again.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it's time to consider that. Something text based, searchable and fast. Hmmm... we could call it Gopher!!!
Re:this article... (Score:2)
And how many vinyl LPs do you have? The change from vinyl to CD was astonishingly fast.
Re:unfortunate (Score:3, Funny)
Loot without the violence (Score:2)
The truth is that piracy is an effective control measure. In the case of price, as price goes up the incentive to pirate increases expoentially. So you have to charge a "reasonable" rate the market will bear or you go out of business because you can't sell product.
Just think about it, if each PS/2 game (for example) cost $5000 instead of $50, would you buy it? No. Would you pirate it?
You don't even have to answer that one, because either way (pirated or not) you've defeated the corps.
BTW: At $264 a day, that's $96,360 per year. Considering how unlikely it would be that you'd be caught for copyright infringement, you'd be better paying the $250k fine every three years than paying for any media at all.