A lie, used to establish the basis of precedent, and to continue to act as if you are "winning".

No, not chump change at all. The kind of "not chump change" that should get you RICO charges. Because this is about as "corrupt organization" as you can get.

Nothing the *AAs have ever told us about copyright is based in fact, and they've used those lies to bully laws into existence which favor them. It's really time to start applying actual criminal charges to these organizations. Because they really are corrupt oligarchies who demand influence over the law.

Some of these clowns need serious jail time. And every politician who is paid for by them has sold us up the river to enrich themselves.

So, just fucking great, we have huge multinationals lying in public, and paying the politicians to get what they want.

The thing is, you find that as nations get more free and accepting of men and women to do what they please, gender parity isn't something that develops. In fact, some careers stratify even more. This isn't a bad thing, this is because men and women tend to have different interests. When things are fair and equal and you can pursue the career you wish, what they wish on average is different. That doesn't mean there aren't outliers, of course, but that you will find some careers are "gendered" in that one gender prefers them more than the other.

We shouldn't try and stop that. We should just make sure that the reason someone chooses a career is because they want it, not because they have been prevented from entering another field and this is their second choice, and also not because they were pressured in to it. We want people to be truly free to do what they desire, without artificial barriers to that.

There are always limits to what they can take. Depending on the state you live in various assets are protected, and only so much of your income can be taken for payment. They don't get to just take everything you own and demand all your money. You will find it is usually things like your primary residence, primary vehicle, and so on are protected, and the limit of monthly payment is a certain percentage of after tax income.

So while a big judgement sucks and can effect you in various ways, it isn't a life ending "you are forever in debt and can never keep a dollar" event.

Digital privacy is of a different order all together. Now they know when you 'do not' have an alibi and the ability to fabricate all the digital evidence. They can destroy you life in an instant for what ever political, commercial or private reason they want. You are accepting the idea that out of control psychopaths in the various intelligence agencies around the globe will become the richest and most powerful people on the planet as they remove all competitors one after another.

We've tried the patriarchy and it's not really working all that well, quite poorly in fact. Perhaps trying out a matriarchy wouldn't be all that bad. The Mosuo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... seems quite interesting and likely would be far more socially balanced.

Hollywood magic seems to be of a far darker side than that, including drug addiction to a full range of legal and 'illegal' drugs, casting couch extortion, under age sex, political corruption and of course tax evasion as a high art. The industry you have when you want an socio-economic black hole rather than anything that produces any genuine benefit.

It has nothing to do with theory, it is the literal contents of the books themselves, including slavery, rape, murder, demonising individuals etc. etc. etc.. If anyone wrote those books today and gathered a group of followers they would find themselves in prison. Seriously, those books should be subject to a class action lawsuit to force a public review of their true contents. You print and distribute them, means you should be held legally liable for the illegal contents, especially with regard to distribution to minors.

Of course not. Did you even read the message you are replying to?

Me to. Now the way that politics and law generally work is that less intrusive solutions are tried first. That is what DNT was. Now the road is clear for some real regulations.

You don't understand politics I see. I was like you 10 years ago. I learnt the hard way that nifty tech solutions are cute, but to get them actually working in the real world, some politics can be extraordinarily useful.

A lot of ideas died in the halls of parliament not because they were stupid, on the contrary, a lot of them were brilliant. They died because those who proposed and supported them didn't understand how to convince people. If your target audience doesn't understand the technical details, the brilliance of your solution will be lost to them. Your persuasion skills - or lack thereof - however, will not.

Perhaps. It is up to others to decide if it is earned or unearned.

Non sequitar. I cannot do everything of course, and that isn't even relevant to my point. side note, I do know how to garden, and as a hobby, I often make my own cured meats. It's enjoyable, and oddly relaxing.

Dear sir, you are getting your stories mixed up, not to mention you might want to go back to read what I wrote. It was not that she didn't know. The issue I took with her attitude was that she did not want to learn some basic electrical knowledge, presented in good faith in an effort to help her. Then expressed her superiority. That's pretty appalling (to me), as well as graceless and very rude.

And she was an artist, not a Nobel Laureate.

I am a software engineer, and have no delusions that my skills are somehow "better" than that of a car mechanic. But learning how to service my own car (other than the basics like changing my own oil) is a waste of my time.

There is a major difference between you and I. I have never ever found gaining knowledge of anything to be a waste of my time.

And it has been years since I chenged my oil, if you are thinking of that as an example. I have rebuilt engines as a lark on occasion.

I can either be doing work or learning new skills in my area of expertise, which provides far more benefit to both myself and society as a whole. I also pay maids to clean my home each week and a service to do my yard work each week during the warm months.

Which knowledge is of no use to yourself or society as a whole? I think we might be at a sort of impasse here, because I gobble up knowledge voraciously, and am very curious about almost everything. Perhaps that is a bad thing? I have what I do to make a living, and am quite good at it, but I fear that limiting myself to that would be, well, very limiting.

Heavens, this isn't even my argument. My time was/is quite valuable also, and one of my biggest abilities was to interface effectively with either the maintenance people or the important visiting politician or CEO or University president or whoever. I can tell you, that is a talent that apparently few have. I ended up in computer support for the "stars" just because of that. The people who would normally do that had great difficulty dealing with people "way above their station". Their outlook, not mine. I walked in, and calmly fixed the problem And that support wasn't in my job description, it was just something I picked up by being curious about computers. Admittidely I have worked intensively with computers since the mainframe only days. But it was an example of non job description knowledge.

No one I know of thinks of me as an ego case. I regularly was commended for the ability to work well with difficult people. Some of them even appreciated a little reminder that they were just human also. Some didn't of course, but that's a matter of reading people.

Why wouldn't you? The blue collar superiority complex is like a celebration of stupid, not unlike the street cred some like to emulate. Everybody works at their job, everyone has something to contribute.

I have never been victim of the idea that some knowledge is useless, or there were things to kow that were outside of any purpose. Of course, I was the weirdo that kept a dictionary in the bathroom. And I still voraciously learn how to do new things. I find the concept that there is some limit of knowledge about things that is useful, that having a wide breadth of knowledge makes you a jack of all trades, and a master of none to be a lack of imagination or understanding of th mind. The human brain has a huge capacity for learning.

My kowledge of other matters, including things that are "below my station" or even "above my station" has served me and my employers very well on many occasions. They think I can "think outside the box". I merely draw on the basic concepts of matters they have not believed useful or important. I can fix your car, or have a bit of discussion about quantum physics. And at some level, there is an interesting interconnection if one looks with an open mind.

Exactly. When the MPAA or RIAA claims that a shared song or movie is a lost sale, they will sue the person involved (or a person with the same IP address that they think is involved). Often, in these lawsuits they will "settle" for a $2,000 per instance fee.

If Sony had to pay $2,000 for each ticket sold given how much they made in opening day, Sony would be looking at $300 million+ in fines. Not a huge burden for Sony, but not chump change either.

Of course Do Not Track is meaningless.

It has always been meaningless. It's a voluntary thing which says nothing at all, and isn't legally binding. It's complete drivel. It's something the industry put out to give the illusion of giving a shit about what we want.

Want to prevent tracking? Don't let the packets happen in the first place. Use things like NoScript, Request Policy and HTTP Switchboard to deny the access entirely.

Treat this stuff like the shit that it is ... intrusive advertising and tracking about everything you do.

The only way to win is block as much of this crap from your browser as you can. You don't owe these companies this data, and the less you provide to them the better.

And when they whine and bitch about their revenue stream and their terms of service ... well, too damned bad. You aren't required to pull in any packets you don't wish to.

Once you start using these blocking plugins, you'll be amazed at just how much crap is actually embedded in most every page. One some sites, literally dozens of 3rd parties ... none of whom give a shit about your Do Not Track setting. So just block them entirely.

If we do it, Sony is one of the companies who helped pay for the law which says you and I would have to pay massive amounts of statutory damages, with additional punitive damages for having done it on purpose.

I want Sony to receive the same magnitude of punishment as they would insist we receive.

Because I really despise multinationals when they argue both sides of the same legal argument as it benefits them.

HA! I can tell what type of keyboard was used to type emails or programs.

Knowing that no ordinary keyboard was adequate for my discerning needs, I of course, had to build my own. Using all of the known enhancements that allow them to work properly.

The keyboard is built of tung oil polished Bubinga wood, and sits on custom built Shakti Stones as well as the stones on every cable.

The individual switches are roller arm microswitches, individually wired to the cables made of low oxygen copper.

The key caps are made of titanium, to allow the proper melding of typist and electronics.

But the piece de resistance is my vacuum tube USB interface.

This allows me to type and program at a level unmatched by those plebian wannabe's With their old IBM keyboards, and the silly children with their glow in the dark green gaming keyboards.

So, once again, if we do this we get crushed under the heel of a team of lawyers.

But a multinational like Sony does it and I bet they'll just dicker and claim some bullshit like fair use they routinely deny exists.

I sincerely hope Sony has to pay a massive fine for this ... something on par with what we'd get beat down with.