The argument that ip rights are harmful to the public ignores that people are motivated by money. The vast majority of advances in medicine, science, technology, arts, etc. are made because people want to profit from them.
and IP laws centralize the ability to profit in the hands of large corporations.
which do you think would make more money for more people? a large company with a monopoly on an invention using lawsuits to keep others out of the market, or a large number of entrepreneurial start-ups competing on equal terms?
Without content, the delivery method has no value and you are paying to access nothing. Therefore the two are wholly intertwined. Separating the two is a false argument.
and presuming that content will somehow disappear is a false argument as well.
so you can say that are paying for access, but what you mean is they are paying for access to content.
i pay for internet access and netflix, even though most of the films i watch come down from bittorrent.
BT is the best way to see new releases, and netflix is the best way to see random things on the spur of the moment.
i am paying netflix for convenience (a form of access) and i would pay for more access to more stuff. i am always going to torrent stuff, but torrenting isn't always fast or convenient.
The East German Stasi also engaged in rampant surveillance, using a network of snitches to assemble secret files on every resident of East Berlin. They knew who was telling subversive jokes--but missed the fact that the Wall was about to come down.
or to quote the great Robert Anton Winston: "National security is the chief cause of national insecurity."
If you see that X people have visited Penny Arcade then that likely represents the actual number of interested parties... Thus the difference in apparent success levels between Peanuts, Garfield and Dilbert despite the fact that they appear to have the same physical circulation numbers.
while that's true, that's not really the point.
the supposition is that newspapers are more "real" than the web.
as a quantitative measure, it is true. dilbert is more circulated, and is presumably more successful because it has generated more money.
the supposition doesn't take into account two important things: that penny-arcade fans are of a much higher quality than dilbert fans, and that success on the scale that that the AC has defined just isn't possible any more.
dilbert may have made more money than PA, but no one flies across the country to attend the Dilbert Expo. i don't know what kind of charity work scott adams does, but i doubt it is as successful as child's play. if scott adams needed a kidney, he might be able to put out the call and get one. if Gabriel needed a kidney, he would get a hundred.
just like any musician starting today will never see the kinds of money and distribution that the beatles saw, it's just not possible for a cartoonist to achieve the kind of purely commercial and purely mainstream success that jim davis or scott adams has seen. however, it is fully possible for a cartoonist to build and command a standing army of rabid followers the way that PA has.
discounting success on the internet as "not real" is a supposition that is living on borrowed time. once the baby boomers are dead and no one is buying newspapers or watching network television anymore, internet success will be the only measure left to judge.
it's like internet famous: where you are famous on the internet, but not famous enough for people to recognize you on the street. as in you are "pretend" famous and not "real" famous. see also: "internet journalism". it means that being successful on the internet isn't really being successful.
it's a supposition that the internet isn't real and thus all that comes from it is not real either.
No offense friend, but putting your email address online like this instead of sending him a direct communication (there is a place on the site to do that) is asking for a whole bunch of spam.
if that address is valid it's obviously disposable.
Credit is virtual money. What if someone stole your credit card and maxed it out, should that be the credit cards problem to deal with?
currency is also virtual money when you think about it. it's not backed by real gold or anything like that.
a lot of fraud protection in credit cards return a significant portion of fraudulent charges. it's the merchant that suffers when it comes to credit fraud.
The penalty from being in jail was boredom because there wasn't much game play there.
another penalty is time lost. a lot of items in games represent an investment of time, if your toon is rotting in jail, you are losing valuable leveling, raiding, farming, or crafting time.
If someone is pulling off insurance scams the habbo company still makes money as the cost of replacing items is 0. The cost of the insurance could also be set at a level close to the resell value which means there'd be little profit in trying to defraud the system.
also, insured items could be flagged once a claim is submitted and tracked through the system.
There are many problems that arise if habbo would just give people the furniture back, ie what if someone traded with the scammer, and now they loose the furniture because it was "stolen goods", how do they get re compensated?
you ban the scammers account(s) and reverse all the trades that account conducted since the victim's account was compromised. too bad habbo lacks that ability.
the problem is that most, if not all online games lack these capabilities because they have to 1)log and retain the data necessary to track user transactions and 2)have the tools available to identify fraudulent transactions and reverse them. that means collecting and potentially analyzing lots of data, having people create the tools for tracking fraudulent transactions, and having people actually do the work to track and fix these problems.
hardware and personnel cost the game companies money, so for habbo it's cheaper to just call the finnish police.
coincidentally, added cost is the exact same reason why ISP's hate government mandated retention of user activity data.
I'm sorry, but some of these kids have payed hundreds if not thousands of pounds for these items, and if someone logs into your account, and transfers it away, you have lost it and it has cost you in the real world.
trading items for real money violates pretty much every online game's terms of service, even the games where you pay the game money for items. the "stealing" of virtual items is a TOS problem, not a real world one.
the problem is that the players can be phished, and that the game lacks the capability to track items and transactions, a mechanism for players to file grievances, and a method to rollback transactions that are proven to be fraudulent. that's a development problem.
Re: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
So for example if I have set up on my laptop a link to my home computer , they could then search that through access allowed as user on my laptop.
i assumed that "off-site" meant sending your laptop to a forensics lab, not using the laptop to connect to resources which were not local to the laptop in question.
that is a pretty scary interpretation of the term "off-site", i have to admit, and all the more reason to use a cheap machine to travel with that has little, if anything, stored on it, including stored passwords or history of any kind, or better yet, just not bother with carrying a laptop or media player over the border.
how does search and seizure work for shipping? could you just fed-ex your encrypted laptop to your destination and then fed-ex it back home when your trip is done?
Use an in-country rental for whatever you need and sanitize it before you return it. I haven't used an iPad, but if it can't store stuff, then use it with remote storage for whatever you'd need a laptop for on a vacation.
or just buy something cheap and toss it in the trash before you hit the border. prepaid mobiles and off lease laptops or cheap netbooks come to mind.
in the case of phones, call forwarding and unified messaging systems could keep disruption to a minimum.
an interesting device i have been meaning to check out is a safebook, which is basically a mobile version of a thin client, i.e. embedded system and little or no local storage.
of course this makes working/playing with digital stuff kind of difficult while en route unless you have carefully planned your trip around access to 3g data or wifi.
Best solution is probably a hidden True Crypt drive. I highly doubt most of these folks could find one and if what is visible is mundane there would be no reason to look hard.
a hidden volume still looks like an encrypted volume, it just has two keys: one for the "regular" volume and one for the "hidden" one.
the point of the hidden volume is to keep your "real" data hidden when forced to decrypt the volume. as in someone puts a gun to your head and says give me the key, you hand over the key that unlocks the "fake" data.
put your neutron bomb plans and hezbollah email on one volume and naked pictures of yourself and gay porn on the other.
put up a fuss about 4th amendment rights and calling your lawyer, and when they start talking about imprisonment or water boarding, give them the key for the volume with the porn on it.
On the post: Is Intellectual Property Itself Unethical?
Re:
and IP laws centralize the ability to profit in the hands of large corporations.
which do you think would make more money for more people? a large company with a monopoly on an invention using lawsuits to keep others out of the market, or a large number of entrepreneurial start-ups competing on equal terms?
On the post: People Pay For Access, Not Content... But Most People Don't Understand The Difference
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
and presuming that content will somehow disappear is a false argument as well.
On the post: People Pay For Access, Not Content... But Most People Don't Understand The Difference
Re: Re: Re: FIXED
On the post: People Pay For Access, Not Content... But Most People Don't Understand The Difference
Re:
i pay for internet access and netflix, even though most of the films i watch come down from bittorrent.
BT is the best way to see new releases, and netflix is the best way to see random things on the spur of the moment.
i am paying netflix for convenience (a form of access) and i would pay for more access to more stuff. i am always going to torrent stuff, but torrenting isn't always fast or convenient.
On the post: Judge Says DHS Can't Hang Onto Travelers Laptops To Search Much Later Without A Warrant
Re: Remind me...
http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/urban-surveillance-security-biz-21cities_cx_cd_0611futu recity.html
or to quote the great Robert Anton Winston: "National security is the chief cause of national insecurity."
On the post: More Studies Show That Violent Video Games Aren't A Problem For Kids
Re: Violent Cartoons
and in the 80's it was comic books and dungeons and dragons.
in the 90's it was rap music.
movies and television have gotten steadily more violent and no one cares because movies have been around forever.
On the post: Scott Adams: Ideas vs. Execution
Re: ...internet rounding error.
while that's true, that's not really the point.
the supposition is that newspapers are more "real" than the web.
as a quantitative measure, it is true. dilbert is more circulated, and is presumably more successful because it has generated more money.
the supposition doesn't take into account two important things: that penny-arcade fans are of a much higher quality than dilbert fans, and that success on the scale that that the AC has defined just isn't possible any more.
dilbert may have made more money than PA, but no one flies across the country to attend the Dilbert Expo. i don't know what kind of charity work scott adams does, but i doubt it is as successful as child's play. if scott adams needed a kidney, he might be able to put out the call and get one. if Gabriel needed a kidney, he would get a hundred.
just like any musician starting today will never see the kinds of money and distribution that the beatles saw, it's just not possible for a cartoonist to achieve the kind of purely commercial and purely mainstream success that jim davis or scott adams has seen. however, it is fully possible for a cartoonist to build and command a standing army of rabid followers the way that PA has.
discounting success on the internet as "not real" is a supposition that is living on borrowed time. once the baby boomers are dead and no one is buying newspapers or watching network television anymore, internet success will be the only measure left to judge.
On the post: Scott Adams: Ideas vs. Execution
Re: Re: Re: Re:
it's like internet famous: where you are famous on the internet, but not famous enough for people to recognize you on the street. as in you are "pretend" famous and not "real" famous. see also: "internet journalism". it means that being successful on the internet isn't really being successful.
it's a supposition that the internet isn't real and thus all that comes from it is not real either.
On the post: Is The Internet Making People Dumber... Or Is Nick Carr Reminiscing For Days That Never Existed
Re: Book Burning also on a decline
http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/888884039_umVwa-L.jpg
On the post: Success Of Free D&D Online Leads To Free Lord Of The Rings Online, Too
Re: Re:
if that address is valid it's obviously disposable.
On the post: Yet Again, Real Police Called Into Virtual World Over (Not Really) Theft Of Virtual Items
Re:
currency is also virtual money when you think about it. it's not backed by real gold or anything like that.
a lot of fraud protection in credit cards return a significant portion of fraudulent charges. it's the merchant that suffers when it comes to credit fraud.
On the post: Yet Again, Real Police Called Into Virtual World Over (Not Really) Theft Of Virtual Items
Re: Re: virtual theft
another penalty is time lost. a lot of items in games represent an investment of time, if your toon is rotting in jail, you are losing valuable leveling, raiding, farming, or crafting time.
On the post: Yet Again, Real Police Called Into Virtual World Over (Not Really) Theft Of Virtual Items
Re: Re: Re: Virtual Insurance
also, insured items could be flagged once a claim is submitted and tracked through the system.
On the post: Yet Again, Real Police Called Into Virtual World Over (Not Really) Theft Of Virtual Items
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
you ban the scammers account(s) and reverse all the trades that account conducted since the victim's account was compromised. too bad habbo lacks that ability.
databases are pretty good at this kind of thing, you just have to write your programs so they can make use of the technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID_transactions
the problem is that most, if not all online games lack these capabilities because they have to 1)log and retain the data necessary to track user transactions and 2)have the tools available to identify fraudulent transactions and reverse them. that means collecting and potentially analyzing lots of data, having people create the tools for tracking fraudulent transactions, and having people actually do the work to track and fix these problems.
hardware and personnel cost the game companies money, so for habbo it's cheaper to just call the finnish police.
coincidentally, added cost is the exact same reason why ISP's hate government mandated retention of user activity data.
On the post: Yet Again, Real Police Called Into Virtual World Over (Not Really) Theft Of Virtual Items
Re:
trading items for real money violates pretty much every online game's terms of service, even the games where you pay the game money for items. the "stealing" of virtual items is a TOS problem, not a real world one.
the problem is that the players can be phished, and that the game lacks the capability to track items and transactions, a mechanism for players to file grievances, and a method to rollback transactions that are proven to be fraudulent. that's a development problem.
On the post: Canadian Official Admits Last Copyright Bill Was Solely About Keeping US Diplomats Happy
Re: Re: Re: Sigh...
this stuff makes me so mad i want to revolt. then i take a bunch of xanax and watch american idol.
On the post: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
Re: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
i assumed that "off-site" meant sending your laptop to a forensics lab, not using the laptop to connect to resources which were not local to the laptop in question.
that is a pretty scary interpretation of the term "off-site", i have to admit, and all the more reason to use a cheap machine to travel with that has little, if anything, stored on it, including stored passwords or history of any kind, or better yet, just not bother with carrying a laptop or media player over the border.
how does search and seizure work for shipping? could you just fed-ex your encrypted laptop to your destination and then fed-ex it back home when your trip is done?
On the post: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
Re: Corporate vs. personal laptops
or just buy something cheap and toss it in the trash before you hit the border. prepaid mobiles and off lease laptops or cheap netbooks come to mind.
in the case of phones, call forwarding and unified messaging systems could keep disruption to a minimum.
an interesting device i have been meaning to check out is a safebook, which is basically a mobile version of a thin client, i.e. embedded system and little or no local storage.
of course this makes working/playing with digital stuff kind of difficult while en route unless you have carefully planned your trip around access to 3g data or wifi.
On the post: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
Re: Re:
a hidden volume still looks like an encrypted volume, it just has two keys: one for the "regular" volume and one for the "hidden" one.
the point of the hidden volume is to keep your "real" data hidden when forced to decrypt the volume. as in someone puts a gun to your head and says give me the key, you hand over the key that unlocks the "fake" data.
On the post: Court Says Border Patrol Can Take Your Laptop For Off-Site Search If They Have Reasonable Suspicion
Re: Re:
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume
put your neutron bomb plans and hezbollah email on one volume and naked pictures of yourself and gay porn on the other.
put up a fuss about 4th amendment rights and calling your lawyer, and when they start talking about imprisonment or water boarding, give them the key for the volume with the porn on it.
easy peasy.
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