Just to clarify, I don't deserve a dime from any work my dad created; I had nothing to do with it.

I honestly don't have any idea what is fair; on one hand I think the lifetime of the artist sounds good, with maybe the possibility of a one time only extension of...10 years? by the artists heirs.
On the other hand, I think that might be too long; how about 10 years from creation, with the artist able to renew it for another 10 years at a time during their lifetime, with heirs only getting a cut during the time after the artist dies until the last renewal runs out?

But this disney crap is ridiculous; what my dad did in the late 50's and 60's I think he should still get any money generated from it, he created it, it's his. If Walt Disney was still alive, I would probably feel the same way about his work.

My dad decided to make a deal with the Swedish company, and got about 5% of their CD run free to sell on the rare occasions when he still performs publicly; it works for him.

Which brings up a question; every time copyright comes up, someone always says that musicians should expect to get their income from public performances... what about those who aren't capable of making public performances due to age or disability? What sort of pension should the government give to creators of original work, when their ability to create leaves them (if they are no longer able to profit from their past work, that is).

You've obviously been here for a while, and seen this before, but I'll post anyway.

I don't disagree with you; I don't agree with you either. I'm a quasi-artist. my father is a musician (he helped invent rock-a-billy, sorry), and has recently had a company in Sweden republishing some of his old records without his permission. My daughter is a artist & photographer.

All of us agree that there needs to be a way to keep others from profiting from our work; the website that hosts something my family did, and didn't ask for permission to use it, should be subject to a civil penalty for doing so that should be tied to the amount of profit they made from it, with a cash penalty for the original unauthorized use, POSSIBLY based on the value of the art, where possible. But it's not criminal, no one was harmed except in their wallet.

We are vehemently against the criminalization that the government is starting; one of the things we've started doing is offering unlimited use licenses to any family stuff for anyone that is being targeted by a criminal trial, free of charge (it's not happened, and probably never will, but I still think it's a good idea).

The main issue, however, is fair use. Any copyrighted work should be free to use for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, scholarship, derivative works, or parody. it's long standing U.S. Law, and the current initiative, while they are presenting it as a means of dealing with counterfeit products and sites selling copies of copyrighted works, will have a strong chilling effect on fair use; law enforcement and purported copyright holders WILL attempt to use this to shut down sites hosting blogs, parodies, derivative works, etc.

In direct answer to your statement, this could mean more of the same content will be produced.. but it's going to have a stifling effect on new artists and those who create new types of art, and have a negative impact on media reviewers, fan sites & parody, to name a few targets.

Un, no. it's completely different.
You were most likely the only mac user in your class; it would be reasonable, like with my kids school, to keep a few windows laptops for kids either too poor to afford one, or nonconformists like yourself.

The TRICK is to make sure that your users have computers appropriate to the work they do; it sounds like in your case a multicore CPU with an adequate amount of RAM would be a good idea (or even a multicore system without adequate ram; you could still work while your giant file was processing)

BUT, most users in most jobs can do the vast majority of their work on a machine with 512mb of ram & a 20gb (or smaller) drive, running office 2000 and windows 2000, or Debian and OpenOffice. It would be a complete and total waste of time for everyone involved, from purchasing to IT to whoever does your training, for the vast majority of users to get a new computer.

While I agree Dos & earlier windows handling of path information is terrible, WHY is everyone so down on drive letters?
It's a quick, short representation of a volume name. It's a GOOD thing.

This is just a little embarrassing.
I kept thinking it was $15 for every 200 extra MB like in the lower-class plan, and didn't bother to read the details.

Damn. OK, that works. Never-mind.

it's against the rules to use the customers internet connection (you never know who might be listening); also, some sites have no internet available.

The normal procedure is to connect via cellular, usually laptop through a tether.... I wish I could use a Pixi + mobile hotspot on at&t.

I honestly don't mind the tiers.
I just want them to make more tiers available; I do a lot of work from client locations, and 2gb a month doesn't cut it; I need about 7. If they had a 7gb tier i could pay...$100-150 a month for, that would be just fine.

I lived in an apartment in the back of my comic store in Lemoore, CA for a couple of years. the building was about 80 years old, with walls that were about 2' thick. constant, giant cockroaches. the only thing that would slow them down was LIGHT.... very, very bright lights. no shadows. I had continual blinding light while I slept for 2 years.

it took me almost 10 years, and a move to the other side of the country, before I could sleep with the lights off without thinking about it.

So, yeah. I agree. Cockroaches suck.

| When you connect to the tracker, you have to give it the same
          | IP you'll be using to connect to clientes.

What makes you say that? if you look at the tracker request parameters, it states that it determines the IP address of the client by seeing where the request came from, which is the exit node from TOR. Some clients, but apparently not the one I use, attempt to send the "true" IP address of the client; with TCP filtering enabled there is no way the client can determine my "true" IP address.
The information sent back to me from the tracker is the list of peers for my client to connect to; the peers are NOT contacted through TOR, so the information sent to them is my true IP.

If I'm missing something PLEASE point it out; I'm always happy to see a way to improve anonymity.

I think most of the people who use TOR and BT do it the way I do; the only thing going through TOR is the connection to the tracker, which gives me the IP of the other clients, without giving the tracker, or anyone listening to the trackers communications, my IP.

I then connect directly to the other clients to interchange packets. This is obviously not secure, but it's an incremental thing. It's more secure than not doing it.

It also helps to make sure that the only packets leaving your computer are packets that you know about; the machine I normally use is filtered all to hell, with only 3 ports open, on a private subnet, connecting to a DMZ machine that is running TOR and what ever other port forwarding or I2P or freenet 0.5 or whatever software I'm using that week.

I have on occasion did things this way, and did all my client communication through I2P, mainly just to see if it would work; it does, not bad actually.

"That doesn't mean there's actually two copper pairs available on the outside plant"

As I said, I think it would in most places in Tennessee; they refused to call it a subsidized thing, but the TN congress made a deal with Bellsouth, or possible MA Bell, that TN residents could get ISDN for $35 a month; I'm pretty sure it's still in effect. I first tried it back in '97 when ISDN was a pretty speedy option for getting on the internet, then in '05 when I came back to the state again and ISDN was the only way to get on the internet faster than dial-up. And $35 for 2 phone lines and a uncompressed 64k connection isn't really that bad.

I've done a lot of network wiring throughout the state, and invariably the residential phone lines with have 2 pairs of copper line coming in.

If i was insane enough to try to put a T-1 in at my house, I would imagine it would take at LEAST 6 months for them to get enough free lines to make a bond.

I agree, this is fantastic. After Obama's cancellation of our space program....

NOTE: Is anyone else sick, tired and disgusted about the people who disagree that cancellation is what he has done? As I explained to my kids: he says he wants to send a ship to a asteroid, and another to mars; however, he canceled the heavy lifter rocket that would have made either mission possible; What he has actually done is given just enough money to heavy lifter development so that he can deny shutting it down (800 million a year for development), and postponed anything that might require big expenditures until after his current term of office is up. read anything that Neil Armstrong is writing lately; he's as disgusted as i am. .... I'm frakking ecstatic about the x-37b; if it makes it safely back down from orbit, we could have a way to get people and small packages in to space WITHOUT relying on Russia, China or India.
This indicates to me that the U.S. military just might have a shuttle replacement waiting in the wings; I'm not talking "Blackstar" which would be great if it actually existed, I'm talking something with similar capabilities to the shuttle.
If Obama canceled our civilian space program so that the funding can go to the military project, I forgive him.

Hi.
I live on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
It's 6 Miles / 10km to the nearest CLEC.
I do, however, have 2 lines running to my house; it's apparently a Tennessee requirement.

I Also used to have ISDN (which is STILL subsidized in TN), until someone local put up a blindingly fast 592 down / 192 up WiFi service.

Gods, I miss civilization sometimes.