Really, this is a socialist vs. capitalist debate that you are just trying to validate through an attempt to misdirect and simplify flanking arguments that have no merit.
This has nothing to do with Socialism or Capitalism to be perfectly frank. I can see how some might attempt to frame the debate in that manner but it's truly not the case. When dealing with utilities there are a different set of rules involved and the internet is a utility much like electricity, water, natural gas, and so on. For what it's worth the term "capitalism" is not even well defined enough to use in a "vs Socialism" framework. I suspect you mean Free Market Capitalism as opposed to State Capitalism so the rest of my response will be based on that.
The bottom line gentlemen is that it doesn't matter if voice is data, what matters is who owns the pipe. Period. Doesn't matter if tax payer dollars were used to augment the cost of the pipe, tax payer dollars are used a lot to "stimulate". The different is that 20 years ago it was considered an investment in infrastructure, now it's a end-around the free-market.
It does matter that tax payer dollars were used. It may be an end-run about the free market on your opinion but the companies in question accepted the money and therefore must live with the consequences. If you want a free market, which the US does not have to begin with, you cannot inject government dollars and then complain about government regulation. If federal tax dollars were used to augment, develop, build, or tied to these networks in other manners then the companies involved accepted government oversight and regulation. You can claim it was ignorant for them to do so but those are the simple facts of the matter. They accepted tax payer dollars and are now subject to regulation by the elected representatives of those same tax payers. There is a moral obligation involved in accepting tax payer money to use that money, or the products of that money, for the good of the people.
This is purely against the constitution by the way. We have a constitution that guarantees "free contract". There is a difference between government regulation and corporate regulation. One has a constitutional right, the other not so much.
You are wrong here. The 14th amendment is generally the amendment used to cover "freedom of contract" but the first case that the language was used in: Lochner v. New York was struck down in the years that followed. In fact "free contract" is not mentioned in the Constitution and it seems you are making up right out of whole cloth.
Net Neutrality is simply another of a string of attempts of this government to seize control of yet more of our infrastructure and take over this country.
Are the black helicopters following you today? In case you haven't noticed net neutrality is less regulation and a guarantee of more personal freedom. Right now there is nothing stopping AT&T from throttling all traffic inbound to its network from all of its competitors. That is what this debate is about.
If you are a socialist or communist and this is how you believe...I suggest you move. Our constitution does not support or allow for your ideology. It protects property ownership. If you are not a socialist or a communist and you really believe that you have the right to own property and enter into free contract under your own responsibilities and merit...then I suggest that you read up on this topic.
Here is where you veer off track. First you present a false dilemma in which those who do not see eye to eye with you on this don't believe in property ownership and it's a pretty text logical fallacy. Then you use the term "free contract" again which isn't a right guaranteed or granted in the Constitution. You imply that this is government asserting control of private property when it is not. You completely lose the ball here. This infrastructure was paid for, in large, by tax payer dollars which makes it subject to regulation. Are you opposed to "Do Not Call" lists? That is regulation of what can be transmitted over "private" phone lines. Are you opposed to laws against spam faxing? It's the same concept overall.
Remember, once the government takes over the internet, and after they have taken over health care, and businesses...then the next logical step (look into Stalin's Russia) they will then seize your property...your home, your land, and your money.
And here's where I suspect you think fearless leader isn't a US citizen as well. The government already controls the internet as much as they possibly can. But the design of said network makes it pretty much impossible to exert control over. Even Iran has trouble shutting down dissidents and they are much smaller than the US. This not a takeover of the internet. This is a statement that you can't place higher value on certain kinds of traffic if you are providing a utility. It's the same as telling the electric company that they can't not provide power over the grid to the business office of their competitor. The internet is a utility and it's about time it was treated as such.
He who owns it...gets to make the decisions. Remember the "net" does not belong to you...or the federal government. And if you think it should...then look at which country's tech and business sector really invented it and took it to this level. Do you think socialist France, Russia, China or Venezuela could have? I think not.
Dude the government invented the internet. Read up on DARPA some time. The protocols that survive and have high rates of adoption are open protocols, like the backbone of all internet traffic TCP/IP, with very few exceptions. We are not talking about the internet belonging to anyone we are talking about regulating what utility companies can and cannot do with their wires. We already regulate the same thing for phone lines and electric lines and the government hasn't taken over those industries yet.
And as far as the "roads" comment goes...Eisenhower copied the German "interstate" system for the same reasons the Germans had it...to freely move military assets throughout a country's interior. You using the roads now...that's like you drinking tang or using velcro...it was never designed for you, so don't use it as an analogy for your socialist validation...its disingenuous.
And the internet was invented by DARPA to provide a network infrastructure for the military that would withstand just about any attack. It wasn't meant for you...I can't even follow that line of logic with a straight face to be perfectly honest.
History dear fellow...learn your history before you try to argue for things that have already failed in 100% of the attempts.
Now here's the best part. I don't think goverment SHOULD be involved in this battle. I despise most government intervention. I am a proud Libertarian. But people like you make me cringe. You are spewing ignorant inanities and you generally make the rest of us who oppose things like this look like we are in the same nutbag boat as you and your ilk. I think the government has too much control and its hands in too many pies but the idiotic stuff you spew is just outrageous. Please switch sides so I don't have to be associated with morons like you.
"beyond reasonable doubt" is the bar for criminal cases only. These trials are civil and the standard of proof is lower. At present we can only use the laws in place and for civil trials the bar is: "Preponderance of the evidence" or in some cases "Clear and convincing evidence". Like it or not there are different standards. Wikipedia has a pretty nice write up on the whole thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
This is why the *AAs are winning. "A preponderance of the evidence" is merely: "it is more likely that it happened than it did not" for most cases. I haven't looked ddep enough but with the awards in these cases it is possible the judges should be using the "clear and convincing evidence" standard, which it appears this judge may be doing.
Hey dummy! Clonezilla is free (http://clonezilla.org/) and even has a server edition. On top of that there are plenty of free deployment tools that are not image based and will work for Microsoft products such as: Unattended (http://unattended.sourceforge.net/)
And a Checkpoint firewall? You have to be kidding right? Checkpoint is arse in a handbasket. If you can't afford a real firewall then your best bet is a *nix box of some sort running the firewall with a nice web interface for changing/adding rules.
I think my solutions are more cost effective than yours. And don't bother telling me they won't work in corporate America I have installed them in small to mid size shops for years. The large shops use real firewalls and can afford Ghost. Strangely enough where I work now is a very large shop and Ghost used to be standard for images until someone pointed out clonezilla. We don't do many images and use OSS tools for our OS installs worldwide. And while I can't tell you who I work for I can safely say it's one of the largest shops around.
The headers are forged. The dictionary does not reflect the technical use of the word. The headers make the email appear to have come from an account that it did not. While userx may have said "send this in my name" the email still did not originate from the address in the headers so it is forged. Whether this is bad or not is a whole other debate but the headers are forged in the technical use of the word.
Having also worked in the industry for years I can assure you that the messages from Facebook are not spam. Unsolicited email != spam. The fact is the email is initiated by someone you know or who has you in their address book. It is not initiated by FB. FB is very careful about this so their messages are not counted as spam. There are multiple verifications before any email is sent. It is not FB's spam as they are sending only what their users request. Saying these messages are FB's spam is like saying that all the damn forwards I get from my mom are hotmail's spam because hotmail sent them regardless of who pushed the button and it is ridiculous.
Forging the headers is also debatable but there is a much better case for it. FB asks if you want to send email and is clear that it will appear to be from you. They use your email address but do not send through your smtp server. While the headers are technically forged they are forged in a legitimate manner. Most corporation forge headers to some degree. My from address here at the office isn't even closely related to the server that sends the email but if you respond the email goes through the system and ends up in my inbox. So technically the headers are forged according to the RFC. FB is doing what amounts to the same thing.
While you may not like FBs methods and they may violate an RFC or two the best you get is forged headers. It is not spam due to the means by which it is initiated or FB would be in every spamlist around and they frankly aren't. It could be considered commercial email even but last.fm didn't offer a way to invite your friends and I sent you an email asking you to join from my gmail account it wouldn't be spam. This is the same thing. FB just makes it easy to ask your friends to join.
Any police officer could ticket you for any number of moving violations, whether or not you committed them or not, and you'd stand no chance of escaping the fine.
It's easy to get out of tickets if you aren't a jerk to the officer first, the prosecutor second, and the judge third. If you are an ass like you show in your post above then sure you don't stand a change but that's your own fault.
First and foremost if the officer doesn't show up for court then you will automatically be found no guilty. Secondly if you can prove you didn't have a headlight out on your care (or any other random malfunction) at the time you were given a ticket for it then you will be found no guilty. Hell in Texas if your inspection is out you can just go get your car inspected within ten days of getting a ticket then you get found no guilty and pay a few dollars for the paperwork. I admit I don't know much about other stated but here in Houston, TX most judges work with you easily.
In most states a yellow light means 'stop' (unless you cannot stop).
Texas Transportation Code
ยง544.007. Traffic-control signals in general.
(e) An operator of a vehicle facing a steady yellow signal is warned by that
signal that:
(1) movement authorized by a green signal is being terminated; or
(2) a red signal is to be given.
There's at least one state where a yellow light doesn't mean anything but a red light is about happen. It is not illegal to enter an intersection on yellow in Texas at all.
It's not "End of story" by any means. If she hadn't been texting and fallen into an open manhole cover it might be. If I were her parent, and I am a parent of seven children, there would be no lawsuit and she would be sans phone until she could learn to be aware of her surroundings. There may be grounds for a lawsuit but she is responsible for the fact she was not paying attention to where she was walking. What if the city had erected a light pole in her usual path? What if she had crossed against the light while texting? An open manhole cover without the proper safety equipment is a danger to be sure but as far as culpability goes she is responsible for walking into a freaking open manhole while paying attention to her phone. The city may be on the hook for some damages but I pray the state has laws to limit the city's liability since she was doing something damn stupid and fell in a damn hole while doing it.
Your logic is as bad as your spelling and grammar. The laws about driving to slow, in general, are based on traveling X mph under the posted speed limit. In Texas it is 15 mph under the speed limit so in a 65 mph zone you can drive between 50 and 65 mph legally and in a 35 mph zone you drive between 20 and 35 mph legally. Your hyperbole shows that you have no understanding of the laws you are arguing against.
The "weird law" to which you refer is not even from Virginia. It is from Tennessee and it is no longer on the books. You can't believe everything you read when you search Google for weird traffic laws to back up your hyperbole.
The FBI warnings don't mean anything at all in these trials. These trials are civil trials. Regardless of any criminal penalties, which I believe are only for commercial infringement (IANAL), the trial that is being referred to here and the other trials are civil trials brought by the RIAA on behalf of the copyright owners. There is no possibility of imprisonment and the damages are different as is the burden of proof.
Judgments against individuals are not usually discharged during bankruptcy. A common example is the short sale to avoid a foreclosure. The mortgage company will sometimes agree and their loss is as taxable income for the individual but if they do not agree to accept the loss then the individual still owes the difference between the remainder of the lien and the short sale. This then goes to court where it is over quickly and the individual has a judgment against that is, in general, not discharged by bankruptcy. Many judgments are not discharged with bankruptcy. Given the publicity of this case I doubt this one would be. I don't think her legal team does either or she would be filing as a back up plan. The longer she waits to file bankruptcy the less chance she has of having it discharged. That last sentence is in practice and not a part bankruptcy code and IANAL.
If you support copyright laws, then you have to accept that sometimes the courts will find in favor of the plantifs and award damages within the guidelines set by congress.
False dilemma. One can support copyright in its original form: as a means to further innovation and believe that the current system is all sorts of broken. One can even support the current idea that IP is something to be protected like real property and also see that the damages awarded in this trial are completely bogus without any regard to limits set by congress. This is not a case where there are mutually exclusive views. I support copyright in its original form but not this tripe we are seeing today. I also support content creator's abilities to profit from their work. I don't support the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA or anything close to the amount awarded by the jury in this case. Nice attempt but the logical fallacy here in your first paragraph pretty much loses the whole debate for you.
noring) is that the RIAA doesn't want 2 million dollars - they want a judgement. They would probably still settle with Jammie for the same amounts the offered to start with, or similar. Perhaps richard could dig deep into his pocket, find the few thousand dollars it would take, and get Jammie out of her, well, jam.
If they didn't want it then why have they not come out and said "We wanted a judgment but this is shite. We'll settle for x"? They have said nothing near the sort and in fact have defended the judgment in the press. They could easily decry the judgment and say that while legal it's too harsh and offer a very public settlement. I think I'll hold my breath...
Another AC who doesn't get the point. EBay doesn't accept any item. They never see the merchandise, they never handle it, they never pay anyone for it. They offer a service that connects two entities: a seller and a buyer and nothing more. They do not have the same legal, moral, or ethical obligations as someone who is purchasing used merchandise. It's not even the same market as pawn shops.
I must be having a really bad day...I am arguing with ACs again.
You see music as a commercial to sell a concert. Most of us still see music as thing onto itself, with not requirement past being music to have value (and a fair market price).
You may see music as something to sell in and of itself and big media may as well but the bands, for the most part, don't. The artists make more money off of touring and merch than they do off of album sales. I have booked many a band and am friends with many more and the vast majority see their time in the studio as an investment to get people interested in coming to see them play live and to buy their merch. They consider it a necessary evil at best. There are a minority who see physical media and digital media sales as their bread and butter but they tend to make less money and have less fans than those who treat recorded music as a side effect of being a performer. There is another minority who play music for the sake of playing music and will do so only on their terms and in my, not so humble opinion, that minority are the true artists. They are also the the ones who make the least money and generally turn out the best work in their genre. If you move into the pop/hip-hop/top 40 sphere the game is different but it is my firmly held opinion that society wouldn't suffer at all if there were never another album from J-Lo or any number of cookie cutter puppets you can here on the radio.
The idea that the quality of music will suffer if the cost of music approaches zero is based on the idea that radio music is good to begin with. Yes less music will be produced because there won't be a get rich quick one-hit-wonder template producing Hannah Montana's for the consumption of every tween girl but that is a good thing for society overall in my opinion. People will make music because they love music and the overall quality is likely to increase. History bears out this conclusion as the whole pop star idea is a fairly recent invention. People will pay for music because they love to listen to it and not as filler or background noise. Quality music is already a scarce good and people, like myself, will pay a premium for it. I buy songs for ~.89 USD but I also buy merch from the bands and go see them live. I support the bands I love in multiple ways from purchasing their work to giving them a place to crash when they are in town. The days of filling arenas to see a stage play may be coming to an end but the days of cramming too many people into small venues and actually knowing your favorite artists on a personal level are just beginning. Sure some will fall by the wayside and not be able to make a living playing music but there are nothing guaranteed in life. I love writing. I have written two novels and both of them suck. I can admit this because I am honest with myself. I will never make a living writing but I make a damn fine living as a Linux consultant. You don't always get to do what you want for a living and that applies to the music industry just as it does for every other part of life.
You may be able to keep an 8 gig ipod full and orgasnized, but how much music is on there? 800 songs? 1000 Songs?
let's work with 1000 songs, 3 minutes each - 3000 minutes = 50 continuous hours of music. So now, if you listen to music for 5 hours a day, it would take you 10 days to listen to your Ipod without refilling. If you refill it every 10 days, you might never listen to the same song again.
So lets work with 8 GB and see how your numbers work out. I have around 1200 songs on the player right now. That's about the max since I don't use anything lower that 192, but that's beside the point, it's usually lower due to the various TV shows and movies I have on there as well. But let's work with your supposed numbers.
1. I don't "refill" my iPod - I add to it or take away depending on my mood.
2. I don't care if I hear every single song on the iPod. I have them divided into playlists based on mood or activity and there's enough to have a good random selection.
Why I would want to "refill" my iPod at all? Remove what's on there and replace it? I only do that if I grow bored with an artist and have found something new to replace them with and then it' usually a rotation at worst. The proposed "refill" scenario is laughable to be honest. Also your usage numbers are arbitrary. I listen to the iPod to and from work so that's about two hours, at least 5 hours at my desk and somedays up to ten hours if I can get people to leave me alone, and I listen to while I am doing yardwork or work on the house as well as when running errands. I bet my usages averages eight to nine hours a day rather than the five you list. And it's not about the number times I listen to a song but rather about having a good enough variety for multiple random playlists. The whole "refill" thing still has me laughing BTW.
It's a pointless amount of music, the greed of free.
And here's where I get to tell you to GO FUCK YOURSELF. Not a single song on my iPod is pirated. There is music that I didn't pay for on there but I think bands giving you CDs doesn't count as "the greed of free" as you so aptly put it. I have paid for almost every song I own. Between e-music, amazon, and other services my collection is NOT free. And as for it being a pointless amount of music well that's your opinion and you are welcome to it. But the size of my music collection has nothing to do with "the greed of free". If that's the crux of your argument than you have lost the debate.
You can argue against the silliness of storage sizes all day and that's not going to make them stop increasing nor is it going to help the recording industry who will have to deal with the perceived value of music.
And in closing I would like say that you can take your "greed of free" and shove it because it's horse shit!
$1 still makes sense, that is if you are paying for a song you are going to actually listen to all the way through. 35TB is stupid to have on a device for audio, that's ridiculously large to manage, and makes the listening experience a chore. I only carry around less than 2GB on my music player, more than that is too much to weed through.
How would you propose to gauge "listen all the way through"? It can't be done. What if I listen to it all the way through hoping to find some hook I like and I don't? I carry an 8GB iPod and have no trouble keeping it full and organized. Storage in portable devices will keep getting larger regardless of how silly some people think the sizes are. If 35TB is cheap enough then that's what will be in the devices because manufactures stop making the smaller sizes at some point.
If you think large storage capacities should decrease song value, you are sadly misguided and know nothing about music creation costs. If you put the cost to a dime or less per song, it becomes a money losing operation to make music. Then what you are left with is a bunch of amateur crap to listen to, because professionals can no longer afford to make enough money from music to survive.
Whether or not the price of storage SHOULD affect the cost of music is not relevant. The fact is that it will and the industry will have to deal with it whether they like it or not and whether they want to or not. This argument has been debunked time and time (...can no longer afford to make enough) and there's no reason to address it. As for a price point of .10 USD a song you would end up with people buying massive amounts of music and recoup some of the loss that way. As the price of storage comes down so does the price of the rest of the recording process and we don't know where the prices will drop to making the discussion moot for the most part.
Lastly, with inflation skyrocketing, $1/song does not make sense. It needs to be $1.29 or higher, as is evident with new itunes pricing. Song prices are going to continue to go up, not down. Has nothing to do with storage capacity of devices.
The price which you claim shows what the cost of a song should be has nothing to do with economics. It is the result of Apple hiding from reality for too long. They had to charge more for DRM free music while the good folks at Amazon are selling the same music for less and still DRM free. I paid .89 USD for the last songs I bought and looking at my next expected purchase I am seeing .89 again at the good ol' Amazon MP3 store. The cost of music will be what the market can bear and as the size of storage goes up the cost of music will come down as storage is a scarcity and digital music is not. Quality may be a scarcity but the most popular music is drivel anyway. It doesn't have to be right but the music industry will have to deal with the perceived value of music getting smaller as the size of storage increases. They don't have a choice.
I didn't vote for the governor we have in Texas right now and didn't vote for some of the other idiots either. However no-one who has a serious chance of winning is running on a decent education platform. I voted for Kinky last time and will again. I don't vote any party line and study each candidate. Both parties have bent the Texas education system over a barrel and failed to use Vasoline. With the two major parties we get to choose just how we will screw the public education system in Texas even more. There are some candidates who have decent education platforms but those are usually third party and in areas where there chances are laughable at best. I vote for them when they come up but it's a sacrificial vote at best.
I don't think paperless is the way to go right now but it is time to start moving towards that goal. Couple something like Dell's education line with a good insurance policy and you could do it for a decent price and with good protection for lost or damaged laptops. It's not something that can be done overnight but we need to start taking the steps. The purchase mentioned in the article was not a wise choice towards the goal and we don't have all the facts such as the license agreement for the e-version and so on. But the decision doesn't shock me at all.
Don't get me wrong. There are good schools in Texas but they are not the norm. Katy just lost most of their highest rankings and the test scores are slipping and KISD used to be one of the best districts in Texas but it's headed down the same path. My oldest daughter's best friend goes to what used to be one of the top junior high schools in the state and from what I hear from her and my daughter talking the school is pretty dreadful compared to when I had friends that attended there.
The numbers don't lie. I cited the actual stats and gave the source (the state itself) from the last full study (2005) and recent stats (2008) showing that your children's exemplary school is the exception and not the norm. My grandparents-in-law taught at Lamar HS in Houston for better than 20 years (Sandy coached football and Florene taught science) and just listening to Florene (Sandy is no longer with us) talk about how good Lamar used to be and how it is now, as she keeps up with teachers there, is depressing.
You can make good arguments for a single school being awesome and making the cut but when less that 50% of 4th and 8th graders are performing at acceptable levels statewide then the system is broken. I am glad your children have an exemplary school to attend however the majority of children in Texas do not. AISD (Alief) is another fine example of a horribly run district. It so horrible that if you get your first job, right out of school teaching in AISD you cannot get hired anywhere else in Texas without a lot of wrangling and then only if you are lucky. My best friend is dealing with that right now.
You live where your children can attend, by your claim, an amazing set of schools. I do not so my children do not attend public school. I have three school age children right now all performing better than the national average in all commonly tested subjects. I intend to keep it that way and the only way to do that with any certainty is to homeschool them. I am glad you don't have to. Before you make statements like "quit voting for that idiot in office" you should check and see if the person did vote for him. I did not and will not. So thanks for the advise but I have already followed it. I am active politically and very much so at the local and state levels. I want to see to public school system in Texas re-vamped but it won't happen. It won't happen regardless of who is governor to be completely honest.
I am a native and proud Texan. Just wanted to make sure that was known. Here is info from the state.tx.us website on education:
Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.
Less than 35% of 8th graders performed at or above grade level in reading and math in 2005
Only 40% of fourth graders performed at or above grade level in math and less than 30% performed at or above grade level in 2005
That is abysmal to be sure! Administration increases at an alarming rate and teachers don't? Seriously, my beloved state has massive education issues. There is reason the unofficial motto for Texas is "Thank God for Mississippi".
The public school system is broken in Texas, it is broken due to the politics involved, the parents involved (or not involved as the case may be), and the teacher's unions. I have friends who teach at a variety of school districts and my grandparents-in-law taught high school here in Houston for better than 20 years. I what the system churns out in the way of students, I hear what the system does to teachers, and I see how it affects my children's friends.
Texas is anything but average in education. (Thank God for Mississippi.) There's a lot to be proud of here in the Lone Star State. Our education system certainly isn't on that list.
Texas is one of the worst states for public education! I wouldn't be shocked if there were rules in place preventing sharing textbooks between campuses of schools in same district much less between districts. It probably also has to do with budget issues where if they could only buy the bundle but then gave away the dead tree version it would work against their budget for the next year. The public school system here in my favorite state is entirely broken. Last I heard Texas was fighting Mississippi for 50th place in education in the US. (Reasons I homeschool my children). I haven't looked into it but I am willing to lay odds that some arcane policy kept the dead tree editions locked up and unable to be used.
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Re: (as romeosidvicious)
Really, this is a socialist vs. capitalist debate that you are just trying to validate through an attempt to misdirect and simplify flanking arguments that have no merit. This has nothing to do with Socialism or Capitalism to be perfectly frank. I can see how some might attempt to frame the debate in that manner but it's truly not the case. When dealing with utilities there are a different set of rules involved and the internet is a utility much like electricity, water, natural gas, and so on. For what it's worth the term "capitalism" is not even well defined enough to use in a "vs Socialism" framework. I suspect you mean Free Market Capitalism as opposed to State Capitalism so the rest of my response will be based on that. The bottom line gentlemen is that it doesn't matter if voice is data, what matters is who owns the pipe. Period. Doesn't matter if tax payer dollars were used to augment the cost of the pipe, tax payer dollars are used a lot to "stimulate". The different is that 20 years ago it was considered an investment in infrastructure, now it's a end-around the free-market. It does matter that tax payer dollars were used. It may be an end-run about the free market on your opinion but the companies in question accepted the money and therefore must live with the consequences. If you want a free market, which the US does not have to begin with, you cannot inject government dollars and then complain about government regulation. If federal tax dollars were used to augment, develop, build, or tied to these networks in other manners then the companies involved accepted government oversight and regulation. You can claim it was ignorant for them to do so but those are the simple facts of the matter. They accepted tax payer dollars and are now subject to regulation by the elected representatives of those same tax payers. There is a moral obligation involved in accepting tax payer money to use that money, or the products of that money, for the good of the people. This is purely against the constitution by the way. We have a constitution that guarantees "free contract". There is a difference between government regulation and corporate regulation. One has a constitutional right, the other not so much. You are wrong here. The 14th amendment is generally the amendment used to cover "freedom of contract" but the first case that the language was used in: Lochner v. New York was struck down in the years that followed. In fact "free contract" is not mentioned in the Constitution and it seems you are making up right out of whole cloth. Net Neutrality is simply another of a string of attempts of this government to seize control of yet more of our infrastructure and take over this country. Are the black helicopters following you today? In case you haven't noticed net neutrality is less regulation and a guarantee of more personal freedom. Right now there is nothing stopping AT&T from throttling all traffic inbound to its network from all of its competitors. That is what this debate is about. If you are a socialist or communist and this is how you believe...I suggest you move. Our constitution does not support or allow for your ideology. It protects property ownership. If you are not a socialist or a communist and you really believe that you have the right to own property and enter into free contract under your own responsibilities and merit...then I suggest that you read up on this topic. Here is where you veer off track. First you present a false dilemma in which those who do not see eye to eye with you on this don't believe in property ownership and it's a pretty text logical fallacy. Then you use the term "free contract" again which isn't a right guaranteed or granted in the Constitution. You imply that this is government asserting control of private property when it is not. You completely lose the ball here. This infrastructure was paid for, in large, by tax payer dollars which makes it subject to regulation. Are you opposed to "Do Not Call" lists? That is regulation of what can be transmitted over "private" phone lines. Are you opposed to laws against spam faxing? It's the same concept overall. Remember, once the government takes over the internet, and after they have taken over health care, and businesses...then the next logical step (look into Stalin's Russia) they will then seize your property...your home, your land, and your money. And here's where I suspect you think fearless leader isn't a US citizen as well. The government already controls the internet as much as they possibly can. But the design of said network makes it pretty much impossible to exert control over. Even Iran has trouble shutting down dissidents and they are much smaller than the US. This not a takeover of the internet. This is a statement that you can't place higher value on certain kinds of traffic if you are providing a utility. It's the same as telling the electric company that they can't not provide power over the grid to the business office of their competitor. The internet is a utility and it's about time it was treated as such. He who owns it...gets to make the decisions. Remember the "net" does not belong to you...or the federal government. And if you think it should...then look at which country's tech and business sector really invented it and took it to this level. Do you think socialist France, Russia, China or Venezuela could have? I think not. Dude the government invented the internet. Read up on DARPA some time. The protocols that survive and have high rates of adoption are open protocols, like the backbone of all internet traffic TCP/IP, with very few exceptions. We are not talking about the internet belonging to anyone we are talking about regulating what utility companies can and cannot do with their wires. We already regulate the same thing for phone lines and electric lines and the government hasn't taken over those industries yet. And as far as the "roads" comment goes...Eisenhower copied the German "interstate" system for the same reasons the Germans had it...to freely move military assets throughout a country's interior. You using the roads now...that's like you drinking tang or using velcro...it was never designed for you, so don't use it as an analogy for your socialist validation...its disingenuous. And the internet was invented by DARPA to provide a network infrastructure for the military that would withstand just about any attack. It wasn't meant for you...I can't even follow that line of logic with a straight face to be perfectly honest. History dear fellow...learn your history before you try to argue for things that have already failed in 100% of the attempts. Now here's the best part. I don't think goverment SHOULD be involved in this battle. I despise most government intervention. I am a proud Libertarian. But people like you make me cringe. You are spewing ignorant inanities and you generally make the rest of us who oppose things like this look like we are in the same nutbag boat as you and your ilk. I think the government has too much control and its hands in too many pies but the idiotic stuff you spew is just outrageous. Please switch sides so I don't have to be associated with morons like you.
Re: Re: Circumstantial evidence should be sufficient (as romeosidvicious)
"beyond reasonable doubt" is the bar for criminal cases only. These trials are civil and the standard of proof is lower. At present we can only use the laws in place and for civil trials the bar is: "Preponderance of the evidence" or in some cases "Clear and convincing evidence". Like it or not there are different standards. Wikipedia has a pretty nice write up on the whole thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
This is why the *AAs are winning. "A preponderance of the evidence" is merely: "it is more likely that it happened than it did not" for most cases. I haven't looked ddep enough but with the awards in these cases it is possible the judges should be using the "clear and convincing evidence" standard, which it appears this judge may be doing.
Oh yeah IANAL
Re: Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
Hey dummy! Clonezilla is free (http://clonezilla.org/) and even has a server edition. On top of that there are plenty of free deployment tools that are not image based and will work for Microsoft products such as: Unattended (http://unattended.sourceforge.net/)
And a Checkpoint firewall? You have to be kidding right? Checkpoint is arse in a handbasket. If you can't afford a real firewall then your best bet is a *nix box of some sort running the firewall with a nice web interface for changing/adding rules.
I think my solutions are more cost effective than yours. And don't bother telling me they won't work in corporate America I have installed them in small to mid size shops for years. The large shops use real firewalls and can afford Ghost. Strangely enough where I work now is a very large shop and Ghost used to be standard for images until someone pointed out clonezilla. We don't do many images and use OSS tools for our OS installs worldwide. And while I can't tell you who I work for I can safely say it's one of the largest shops around.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Actually, Mike, your "easy way" won't work (as romeosidvicious)
The headers are forged. The dictionary does not reflect the technical use of the word. The headers make the email appear to have come from an account that it did not. While userx may have said "send this in my name" the email still did not originate from the address in the headers so it is forged. Whether this is bad or not is a whole other debate but the headers are forged in the technical use of the word.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Actually, Mike, your "easy way" won't work (as romeosidvicious)
Having also worked in the industry for years I can assure you that the messages from Facebook are not spam. Unsolicited email != spam. The fact is the email is initiated by someone you know or who has you in their address book. It is not initiated by FB. FB is very careful about this so their messages are not counted as spam. There are multiple verifications before any email is sent. It is not FB's spam as they are sending only what their users request. Saying these messages are FB's spam is like saying that all the damn forwards I get from my mom are hotmail's spam because hotmail sent them regardless of who pushed the button and it is ridiculous.
Forging the headers is also debatable but there is a much better case for it. FB asks if you want to send email and is clear that it will appear to be from you. They use your email address but do not send through your smtp server. While the headers are technically forged they are forged in a legitimate manner. Most corporation forge headers to some degree. My from address here at the office isn't even closely related to the server that sends the email but if you respond the email goes through the system and ends up in my inbox. So technically the headers are forged according to the RFC. FB is doing what amounts to the same thing.
While you may not like FBs methods and they may violate an RFC or two the best you get is forged headers. It is not spam due to the means by which it is initiated or FB would be in every spamlist around and they frankly aren't. It could be considered commercial email even but last.fm didn't offer a way to invite your friends and I sent you an email asking you to join from my gmail account it wouldn't be spam. This is the same thing. FB just makes it easy to ask your friends to join.
Re: Re: easy sparky (as romeosidvicious)
Are you insane?
Any police officer could ticket you for any number of moving violations, whether or not you committed them or not, and you'd stand no chance of escaping the fine.
It's easy to get out of tickets if you aren't a jerk to the officer first, the prosecutor second, and the judge third. If you are an ass like you show in your post above then sure you don't stand a change but that's your own fault.
First and foremost if the officer doesn't show up for court then you will automatically be found no guilty. Secondly if you can prove you didn't have a headlight out on your care (or any other random malfunction) at the time you were given a ticket for it then you will be found no guilty. Hell in Texas if your inspection is out you can just go get your car inspected within ten days of getting a ticket then you get found no guilty and pay a few dollars for the paperwork. I admit I don't know much about other stated but here in Houston, TX most judges work with you easily.
Re: not so clear (as romeosidvicious)
In most states a yellow light means 'stop' (unless you cannot stop).
There's at least one state where a yellow light doesn't mean anything but a red light is about happen. It is not illegal to enter an intersection on yellow in Texas at all.
Re: (as romeosidvicious)
It's not "End of story" by any means. If she hadn't been texting and fallen into an open manhole cover it might be. If I were her parent, and I am a parent of seven children, there would be no lawsuit and she would be sans phone until she could learn to be aware of her surroundings. There may be grounds for a lawsuit but she is responsible for the fact she was not paying attention to where she was walking. What if the city had erected a light pole in her usual path? What if she had crossed against the light while texting? An open manhole cover without the proper safety equipment is a danger to be sure but as far as culpability goes she is responsible for walking into a freaking open manhole while paying attention to her phone. The city may be on the hook for some damages but I pray the state has laws to limit the city's liability since she was doing something damn stupid and fell in a damn hole while doing it.
Re: Re: Break the law a little (as romeosidvicious)
Your logic is as bad as your spelling and grammar. The laws about driving to slow, in general, are based on traveling X mph under the posted speed limit. In Texas it is 15 mph under the speed limit so in a 65 mph zone you can drive between 50 and 65 mph legally and in a 35 mph zone you drive between 20 and 35 mph legally. Your hyperbole shows that you have no understanding of the laws you are arguing against.
The "weird law" to which you refer is not even from Virginia. It is from Tennessee and it is no longer on the books. You can't believe everything you read when you search Google for weird traffic laws to back up your hyperbole.
Re: Right! (as romeosidvicious)
The FBI warnings don't mean anything at all in these trials. These trials are civil trials. Regardless of any criminal penalties, which I believe are only for commercial infringement (IANAL), the trial that is being referred to here and the other trials are civil trials brought by the RIAA on behalf of the copyright owners. There is no possibility of imprisonment and the damages are different as is the burden of proof.
Re: Yeah, but... (as romeosidvicious)
Judgments against individuals are not usually discharged during bankruptcy. A common example is the short sale to avoid a foreclosure. The mortgage company will sometimes agree and their loss is as taxable income for the individual but if they do not agree to accept the loss then the individual still owes the difference between the remainder of the lien and the short sale. This then goes to court where it is over quickly and the individual has a judgment against that is, in general, not discharged by bankruptcy. Many judgments are not discharged with bankruptcy. Given the publicity of this case I doubt this one would be. I don't think her legal team does either or she would be filing as a back up plan. The longer she waits to file bankruptcy the less chance she has of having it discharged. That last sentence is in practice and not a part bankruptcy code and IANAL.
Re: (as romeosidvicious)
False dilemma. One can support copyright in its original form: as a means to further innovation and believe that the current system is all sorts of broken. One can even support the current idea that IP is something to be protected like real property and also see that the damages awarded in this trial are completely bogus without any regard to limits set by congress. This is not a case where there are mutually exclusive views. I support copyright in its original form but not this tripe we are seeing today. I also support content creator's abilities to profit from their work. I don't support the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA or anything close to the amount awarded by the jury in this case. Nice attempt but the logical fallacy here in your first paragraph pretty much loses the whole debate for you.
If they didn't want it then why have they not come out and said "We wanted a judgment but this is shite. We'll settle for x"? They have said nothing near the sort and in fact have defended the judgment in the press. They could easily decry the judgment and say that while legal it's too harsh and offer a very public settlement. I think I'll hold my breath...
Re: (as romeosidvicious)
Another AC who doesn't get the point. EBay doesn't accept any item. They never see the merchandise, they never handle it, they never pay anyone for it. They offer a service that connects two entities: a seller and a buyer and nothing more. They do not have the same legal, moral, or ethical obligations as someone who is purchasing used merchandise. It's not even the same market as pawn shops.
I must be having a really bad day...I am arguing with ACs again.
Re: Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
You may see music as something to sell in and of itself and big media may as well but the bands, for the most part, don't. The artists make more money off of touring and merch than they do off of album sales. I have booked many a band and am friends with many more and the vast majority see their time in the studio as an investment to get people interested in coming to see them play live and to buy their merch. They consider it a necessary evil at best. There are a minority who see physical media and digital media sales as their bread and butter but they tend to make less money and have less fans than those who treat recorded music as a side effect of being a performer. There is another minority who play music for the sake of playing music and will do so only on their terms and in my, not so humble opinion, that minority are the true artists. They are also the the ones who make the least money and generally turn out the best work in their genre. If you move into the pop/hip-hop/top 40 sphere the game is different but it is my firmly held opinion that society wouldn't suffer at all if there were never another album from J-Lo or any number of cookie cutter puppets you can here on the radio.
The idea that the quality of music will suffer if the cost of music approaches zero is based on the idea that radio music is good to begin with. Yes less music will be produced because there won't be a get rich quick one-hit-wonder template producing Hannah Montana's for the consumption of every tween girl but that is a good thing for society overall in my opinion. People will make music because they love music and the overall quality is likely to increase. History bears out this conclusion as the whole pop star idea is a fairly recent invention. People will pay for music because they love to listen to it and not as filler or background noise. Quality music is already a scarce good and people, like myself, will pay a premium for it. I buy songs for ~.89 USD but I also buy merch from the bands and go see them live. I support the bands I love in multiple ways from purchasing their work to giving them a place to crash when they are in town. The days of filling arenas to see a stage play may be coming to an end but the days of cramming too many people into small venues and actually knowing your favorite artists on a personal level are just beginning. Sure some will fall by the wayside and not be able to make a living playing music but there are nothing guaranteed in life. I love writing. I have written two novels and both of them suck. I can admit this because I am honest with myself. I will never make a living writing but I make a damn fine living as a Linux consultant. You don't always get to do what you want for a living and that applies to the music industry just as it does for every other part of life.
Re: Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
You may be able to keep an 8 gig ipod full and orgasnized, but how much music is on there? 800 songs? 1000 Songs?
let's work with 1000 songs, 3 minutes each - 3000 minutes = 50 continuous hours of music. So now, if you listen to music for 5 hours a day, it would take you 10 days to listen to your Ipod without refilling. If you refill it every 10 days, you might never listen to the same song again.
So lets work with 8 GB and see how your numbers work out. I have around 1200 songs on the player right now. That's about the max since I don't use anything lower that 192, but that's beside the point, it's usually lower due to the various TV shows and movies I have on there as well. But let's work with your supposed numbers.1. I don't "refill" my iPod - I add to it or take away depending on my mood.
2. I don't care if I hear every single song on the iPod. I have them divided into playlists based on mood or activity and there's enough to have a good random selection.
Why I would want to "refill" my iPod at all? Remove what's on there and replace it? I only do that if I grow bored with an artist and have found something new to replace them with and then it' usually a rotation at worst. The proposed "refill" scenario is laughable to be honest. Also your usage numbers are arbitrary. I listen to the iPod to and from work so that's about two hours, at least 5 hours at my desk and somedays up to ten hours if I can get people to leave me alone, and I listen to while I am doing yardwork or work on the house as well as when running errands. I bet my usages averages eight to nine hours a day rather than the five you list. And it's not about the number times I listen to a song but rather about having a good enough variety for multiple random playlists. The whole "refill" thing still has me laughing BTW.
It's a pointless amount of music, the greed of free.
And here's where I get to tell you to GO FUCK YOURSELF. Not a single song on my iPod is pirated. There is music that I didn't pay for on there but I think bands giving you CDs doesn't count as "the greed of free" as you so aptly put it. I have paid for almost every song I own. Between e-music, amazon, and other services my collection is NOT free. And as for it being a pointless amount of music well that's your opinion and you are welcome to it. But the size of my music collection has nothing to do with "the greed of free". If that's the crux of your argument than you have lost the debate.
You can argue against the silliness of storage sizes all day and that's not going to make them stop increasing nor is it going to help the recording industry who will have to deal with the perceived value of music.
And in closing I would like say that you can take your "greed of free" and shove it because it's horse shit!
Re: (as romeosidvicious)
$1 still makes sense, that is if you are paying for a song you are going to actually listen to all the way through. 35TB is stupid to have on a device for audio, that's ridiculously large to manage, and makes the listening experience a chore. I only carry around less than 2GB on my music player, more than that is too much to weed through.
How would you propose to gauge "listen all the way through"? It can't be done. What if I listen to it all the way through hoping to find some hook I like and I don't? I carry an 8GB iPod and have no trouble keeping it full and organized. Storage in portable devices will keep getting larger regardless of how silly some people think the sizes are. If 35TB is cheap enough then that's what will be in the devices because manufactures stop making the smaller sizes at some point.
If you think large storage capacities should decrease song value, you are sadly misguided and know nothing about music creation costs. If you put the cost to a dime or less per song, it becomes a money losing operation to make music. Then what you are left with is a bunch of amateur crap to listen to, because professionals can no longer afford to make enough money from music to survive.
Whether or not the price of storage SHOULD affect the cost of music is not relevant. The fact is that it will and the industry will have to deal with it whether they like it or not and whether they want to or not. This argument has been debunked time and time (...can no longer afford to make enough) and there's no reason to address it. As for a price point of .10 USD a song you would end up with people buying massive amounts of music and recoup some of the loss that way. As the price of storage comes down so does the price of the rest of the recording process and we don't know where the prices will drop to making the discussion moot for the most part.
Lastly, with inflation skyrocketing, $1/song does not make sense. It needs to be $1.29 or higher, as is evident with new itunes pricing. Song prices are going to continue to go up, not down. Has nothing to do with storage capacity of devices.
The price which you claim shows what the cost of a song should be has nothing to do with economics. It is the result of Apple hiding from reality for too long. They had to charge more for DRM free music while the good folks at Amazon are selling the same music for less and still DRM free. I paid .89 USD for the last songs I bought and looking at my next expected purchase I am seeing .89 again at the good ol' Amazon MP3 store. The cost of music will be what the market can bear and as the size of storage goes up the cost of music will come down as storage is a scarcity and digital music is not. Quality may be a scarcity but the most popular music is drivel anyway. It doesn't have to be right but the music industry will have to deal with the perceived value of music getting smaller as the size of storage increases. They don't have a choice.
Re: Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
Marnie,
I didn't vote for the governor we have in Texas right now and didn't vote for some of the other idiots either. However no-one who has a serious chance of winning is running on a decent education platform. I voted for Kinky last time and will again. I don't vote any party line and study each candidate. Both parties have bent the Texas education system over a barrel and failed to use Vasoline. With the two major parties we get to choose just how we will screw the public education system in Texas even more. There are some candidates who have decent education platforms but those are usually third party and in areas where there chances are laughable at best. I vote for them when they come up but it's a sacrificial vote at best.
I don't think paperless is the way to go right now but it is time to start moving towards that goal. Couple something like Dell's education line with a good insurance policy and you could do it for a decent price and with good protection for lost or damaged laptops. It's not something that can be done overnight but we need to start taking the steps. The purchase mentioned in the article was not a wise choice towards the goal and we don't have all the facts such as the license agreement for the e-version and so on. But the decision doesn't shock me at all.
Don't get me wrong. There are good schools in Texas but they are not the norm. Katy just lost most of their highest rankings and the test scores are slipping and KISD used to be one of the best districts in Texas but it's headed down the same path. My oldest daughter's best friend goes to what used to be one of the top junior high schools in the state and from what I hear from her and my daughter talking the school is pretty dreadful compared to when I had friends that attended there.
The numbers don't lie. I cited the actual stats and gave the source (the state itself) from the last full study (2005) and recent stats (2008) showing that your children's exemplary school is the exception and not the norm. My grandparents-in-law taught at Lamar HS in Houston for better than 20 years (Sandy coached football and Florene taught science) and just listening to Florene (Sandy is no longer with us) talk about how good Lamar used to be and how it is now, as she keeps up with teachers there, is depressing.
You can make good arguments for a single school being awesome and making the cut but when less that 50% of 4th and 8th graders are performing at acceptable levels statewide then the system is broken. I am glad your children have an exemplary school to attend however the majority of children in Texas do not. AISD (Alief) is another fine example of a horribly run district. It so horrible that if you get your first job, right out of school teaching in AISD you cannot get hired anywhere else in Texas without a lot of wrangling and then only if you are lucky. My best friend is dealing with that right now.
You live where your children can attend, by your claim, an amazing set of schools. I do not so my children do not attend public school. I have three school age children right now all performing better than the national average in all commonly tested subjects. I intend to keep it that way and the only way to do that with any certainty is to homeschool them. I am glad you don't have to. Before you make statements like "quit voting for that idiot in office" you should check and see if the person did vote for him. I did not and will not. So thanks for the advise but I have already followed it. I am active politically and very much so at the local and state levels. I want to see to public school system in Texas re-vamped but it won't happen. It won't happen regardless of who is governor to be completely honest.
"Thank God for Mississippi"
Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
If you need more stats:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/082708dntextaksscores.14 5fbde2.html
Our scores are still falling, widening the gap between us and the rest of the nation...
Re: Re: (as romeosidvicious)
I am a native and proud Texan. Just wanted to make sure that was known. Here is info from the state.tx.us website on education:
Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.
Less than 35% of 8th graders performed at or above grade level in reading and math in 2005
Only 40% of fourth graders performed at or above grade level in math and less than 30% performed at or above grade level in 2005
(http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/wwstand/wws0512ed/)
That is abysmal to be sure! Administration increases at an alarming rate and teachers don't? Seriously, my beloved state has massive education issues. There is reason the unofficial motto for Texas is "Thank God for Mississippi".
The public school system is broken in Texas, it is broken due to the politics involved, the parents involved (or not involved as the case may be), and the teacher's unions. I have friends who teach at a variety of school districts and my grandparents-in-law taught high school here in Houston for better than 20 years. I what the system churns out in the way of students, I hear what the system does to teachers, and I see how it affects my children's friends.
Texas is anything but average in education. (Thank God for Mississippi.) There's a lot to be proud of here in the Lone Star State. Our education system certainly isn't on that list.
(as romeosidvicious)
Texas is one of the worst states for public education! I wouldn't be shocked if there were rules in place preventing sharing textbooks between campuses of schools in same district much less between districts. It probably also has to do with budget issues where if they could only buy the bundle but then gave away the dead tree version it would work against their budget for the next year. The public school system here in my favorite state is entirely broken. Last I heard Texas was fighting Mississippi for 50th place in education in the US. (Reasons I homeschool my children). I haven't looked into it but I am willing to lay odds that some arcane policy kept the dead tree editions locked up and unable to be used.