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Bennett Haselton writes: Vimeo and Youtube are pressured to remove a dark, fan-made "Power Rangers" short film; Vimeo capitulated, while Youtube has so far left it up. I'm generally against the overreach of copyright law, but in this case, how could anyone argue the short film doesn't violate the rights of the franchise creator? And should Vimeo and Youtube clarify their policies on the unauthorized use of copyrighted characters? Read on for the rest.

"Power/Rangers", the 11-minute short directed by music video veteran Joseph Kahn, is still available on Youtube, where it was posted by the film's producer, Adi Shankar. Rival video site Vimeo removed the short film after receiving a copyright complaint from Haim Saban, the creator of the U.S. series, for using the characters without his permission.

The movie is OK. I think the people gushing about how amazing it is are mentally comparing it to the awful 1995 "Power Rangers" movie or the bland cartoon. But how are the director and his defenders arguing that the movie isn't a copyright violation?

The director said in one of a series of tweets: "Every image in POWER/RANGERS is original footage. Nothing was pre-existing. There is no copyrighted footage in the short." True, but this ignores the fact that characters themselves can be protected by copyright. Fan fiction sites can exist legally only to the extent that the character copyright owner grants permission (J.K. Rowling has explicitly given permission for the Harry Potter characters to be used in fan fiction; Anne Rice specifically prohibits fan fiction featuring her characters). Most obviously, when a studio like Warner Brothers produces their own gritty reboot of a character, they have to pay fees to the owner of that character, even if every frame of their movie is entirely the studio's own work. Why on Earth would the studio pay those fees, if they didn't have to?

The director also tweeted, "I am not making any money on it and I refuse to accept any from anyone." Well, everyone ought to know by now that that argument isn't going to fly if you put a copy of The Avengers on your personal home page. It's not obvious why that defense should work any better if you've violated someone's copyright by using their characters without permission, instead of just copying their movie.

Kahn also tweeted that the short film was not a copyright violation because it was "satire," and his supporters agreed, calling the film a "parody." (Copyright law holds that you can satirize or parody someone else's work without their permission; thus Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer do not have to pay licensing fees for the movies that they rip off in their awful "parodies.") But no English speaker would use the word "satire" or "parody" to describe Kahn's movie, precisely because of the qualities that people loved about it (dark, violent, almost completely humorless). Most tellingly, as far as I can tell nobody did call it a satire or parody until that started being raised as a defense against copyright claims -- they called it a dark, gritty remake or re-imagining, because that's what it was, and calling it a "satire" sounds jarringly wrong unless you're in on the wink-wink pseudo-legal strategy.

Kahn also invoked "fair use" multiple times, but that's just begging the question: since "fair use" is a catch-all for several scenarios in which you can legally use copyrighted content without the owner's permission (parody/satire, brief excerpt for the purpose of commentary/criticism, etc.), which defense applies here? One of the criteria for "fair use" is how much of the original work you re-used -- if your online review of The Dark Knight links to a 10-second clip that you posted to show that the fight scenes are kick-ass, that might be OK, but a 30-minute excerpt would not be. But if we apply that logic to the use of a copyrighted character, in a story you're either using someone else's copyrighted character, or you're not. Given that characters are protected by copyright at all, it doesn't make much sense to talk about "using 0.5% of a character", the way that a 30-second clip would constitute only 0.5% of a 100-minute movie. It certainly wouldn't make sense in the case of Kahn's remake, where the copyrighted Power Rangers characters are onscreen in every single scene.

The director's defenders rightly pointed out the absurdity of Vimeo removing the short film just hours after giving it a "Staff Pick" award, but the real absurdity runs in the opposite direction -- how did Vimeo's staff give an award to the film that they should have known was a knockoff? Presumably they had heard of the Power Rangers and knew that the movie was using the characters without permission.

Moreover, there's not just a legal argument against an unauthorized "gritty reboot" of the Power Rangers, there's a moral one as well. The short film shows that Joseph Kahn is a technically competent director -- but there are many, many competent directors out there, making gritty sci-fi films of short and feature length, all competing for people's attention. By using the "Power Rangers" name for his piece, Kahn got way more views than he would have gotten if he had released it as "just another dark sci-fi short film." And despite his protestations that he's not making money from the film, it's bringing him exposure and connections which are almost certainly monetizable somewhere down the road, opportunities which come at the expense of other similarly talented directors. Does that seem fair?

Remember, we welcome reader-submitted essays and opinion pieces, not just news snippets, through the Slashdot submissions form .

grassy_knoll writes "As a follow up to an earlier story, the Lori Drew 'cyber-bullying' trial has resulted in misdemeanor convictions." grassy_knoll quotes from the AP story as carried by Salon: "The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier. However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count. Prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teen boy on the MySpace social networking site to harass Megan. Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her." Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines — a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.

faxafloi writes "SFGate has an article about how remote controls have proliferated in our world like rabbits. Even their inventor, Robert Adler, is befuddled by them. 'Universal' remotes help some, but are not interoperable with enough devices to drive everything, so we're stuck with multiple remotes. The article then describes the new top of the line models, ranging to (ahem) $1699.00." (Of course, there were remote controls of a sort long before Adler.) For another approach to universal remote control -- using a cell phone as display and controller -- read on below.

An anonymous reader writes "This whitepaper describes Intel's research into innovative and futuristic uses of camera phones. Cell phones are already much more than a communication device. In cities around the world, purchasing a soda out of a vending machine can be as easy as dialing your cell phone. Even parking and toll fees are easily paid through a cell phone, and they are used as debit/credit cards to purchase food, services, and gas. Now, the global proliferation of cell phones with cameras brings more opportunities to use mobile phone devices in different capacities -- and the best part is that these applications require no additional hardware. In Intel's research, camera phones are being used as pointing devices, authentication devices, storage devices, and even as user interfaces for systems that, because of cost and/or form factor, aren't able to accommodate a display of their own."

wrx writes "Elena has taken another motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area, and has updated her site with a whole lot of new photos and text. The pictures now show several surrounding towns, the radiation level of the magic wood, and many more details inside buildings. After the dust had settled from the original slashdot story, Elena wrote 'who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.'"

abysmilliard writes "A young Ukrainian woman has posted a photo journal of her motorcycle rides through Chernobyl and the area surrounding it. Included are pictures of the now-emptied city, maps of current radiation levels, and a discussion of how the area has changed. While the english is quite broken, it's often rather surreal, as well, with quotes like, 'I don't know how sound the silence to those tourists that they can not stand it, but to me after hitting a red line on my bike tacho it sound like all those ghosts cursing 1100cc kawasaki engin.'"

AKAImBatman writes "When it comes to launching millions of pounds of material into space, nearly everyone knows about the Orion Project. Blow up a series of nuclear bombs under your dairy-aire and ride the explosion on up. Unfortunately, the Orion spewed out so much radiation that it just wasn't a feasible launch option. If we want commuter trips to space, we're going to have to find another way. Well, it turns out that NASA's been doing quite a bit of research on Gas Core Nuclear Rockets, an ultra-powerful nuclear rocket that puts out almost no radiation. This research has spurred a fascinating new generation of ideas on reaching the cosmos. Could inexpensive cruises to the moon happen within our lifetimes?"

Trailwalker writes "An article at BigBlueBall.com states that 75% of web connections do not use a browser. IM and P2P applications are used instead." While surprising, this is probably more indicative of how instant messaging has been able to complement and/or replace email in recent times.

prostoalex writes "Somehow the robotic inventions of the 19th century are terribly under-appreciated. But when you read about a new Aibo or running humanoid robot, don't forget the mechanical marvels of the 19th century. The Steam Man, unveiled in literature in 1865, would provide the willing consumer with a truly horseless carriage. The Electric Man(1885) was a working prototype before 19th century was over, too. The Boilerplate was a prototype soldier built in 1893 to resolve potential conflicts between the nations, and, according to promotional photographs, was usually surrounded by young females. And, finally, the Automatic Man, unveiled in 1900, a 7'5'' robot capable of many things, but mainly pulling carriages." (Don't forget the less-fictional, more-fraudulent Ajeeb and The Turk.)

Max Tardiveau writes "I just finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. It is an enjoyable book, written engagingly by an interesting character -- the kind of book that makes you think twice about certain things (for instance, the fact that you're not dead: is that really because you're so darn good, or does dumb luck play a part?) Although written all the way back in 2001, this book is more relevant than ever, since one of its major topics is the impact of unpredictable events on markets, insurance, and our perception of life in general. In fact, Taleb makes a living from unforeseen events; these days, that seems like a rather cunning niche." Read on for the rest of his review of this book. Fooled by Randomness author Nassim Nicholas Taleb pages 220 publisher Texere rating 8 reviewer Max Tardiveau ISBN 1587990717 summary Debunking fallacies of observation, Taleb reminds us of the pervasive ineffables that complicate life at every turn.

The main topic of the book is the fact that all humans are simply terrible at judging probabilities. Taleb is a securities trader, so a lot of the book revolves around financial probabilities, but his argument is mainstream and requires absolutely no knowledge of the markets. The book details examples of people wildly misjudging risks and probabilities in many contexts. Often that misestimation is understandable in advance of certain events, but harder to excuse after they've occurred; Taleb hits pretty hard on what he calls "data snoopers," his term for people who back-fit theories to existing data.

One of the most notorious examples is the Bible code (which has been thoroughly debunked), but Taleb argues that analysts who spend their time trying to find patterns in historical market data are no different: if you try long enough and hard enough, you will unavoidably find apparent regularities, which can be extremely compelling when seen in isolation. In context, though, they dissolve into nothing but meaningless statistical anomalies. Taleb rightfully compares these searches for meaning to the famous monkeys and typewriters parable.

Taleb's best example of poor probability intuition is probably the infamous survivor bias, which is our tendency to be disproportionately impressed by success. We almost always ignore the fact that, for one success story, there are many failures. But we seldom hear about the failures (just like we never hear about the many theories that didn't fit the data). So it's all a game of numbers: out of 10,000 traders, a few are statistically bound to be successful, even if they are nothing more than lucky idiots. The fact that they succeeded does not mean anything. It doesn't mean that they are bad traders, but it doesn't mean that they are good traders either, because on average somebody had to succeed.

One of Taleb's hot buttons is that people tend to be too confident in what they know. He argues convincingly that we should take everything, including science, with a grain of salt. Writing about Karl Popper, he points out that there are only two kinds of scientific theories: those that are demonstrably false, and those that are not yet demonstrably false. An irksome (but sadly true) observation, yet most people behave as if what they know is eternal truth. One could of course argue that Popper's observation is but another kind of truth, but I tend to put a lot more trust in people who question what they know than in people who don't.

Another of Taleb's peeves is the human tendency to over-attribute every random event (the old post hoc, ergo propter hoc). For instance, a commentator saying that "the Dow went down ten points today on concerns about Iraq" is talking nonsense: there is no way anyone can tie such a small market move to any particular reason. I found this specific point (which in retrospect is blindingly obvious) especially enlightening, as I am embarrassed to admit that, until now, I just accepted those market comments at face value.

Taleb also has some fun at the expense of economists and analysts, especially those whose predictions turned out wrong, but who claim that the theories were in fact right, and that the facts simply weren't supposed to be that way. This is what he calls denial of history, and is common among investors and gamblers (the two being of course close cousins).

The style of the book is informal and funny, and often meandering. We hop from one topic to the next, which occasionally may detract from the book's continuity, but overall the author's points come through loud and clear. Ironically for a man who advocates self-doubt, Taleb is starkly self-confident, though not in an irritating way.

Taleb is an intriguing, multi-cultural, iconoclastic character that has been around Wall Street for a while, and now runs his own small firm. Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, an absolute must-read for anyone who owns a brain) has written an excellent article that shows how Taleb's reasoning runs counter to just about every bit of conventional Wall Street wisdom. If you're interested in the markets, especially derivatives, and how Taleb trounces most of Wall Street's voodoo doctors, this moderately technical interview from 1996 is worth reading too.

Overall, a warmly recommended book.

You can purchase Fooled by Randomness from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Edward Glamkowski writes "Science Daily (among others) has an article about host genes that make people vulnerable to leprosy. Appearently the disease still affects over one million people in 91 countries today. "This is the second study, published in 2003 by McGill/CGDN scientists, that illustrates the importance of host genes in infectious disease." Appearently they did a study on Legionnaire's disease as well and plan on studying malaria and TB."

NickRipley writes "Clear Channel (owner of every radio station in America) is purporting to offer a new service, whereby concertgoers can receive an official recording of the concert they just attended, within moments after the final note. How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating? Also, what kind of equipment will have to be used to produce these so fast? Will the recording process suffer due to the hurry?"

XNormal writes "It's not exactly new but for some reason it doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. The stack smashing-protector developed by Hiroaki Etoh at IBM's Tokyo Research Lab is a patch for GCC that provides effective protection against buffer overflows. It protects against cases not covered by StackGuard and StackShield. It it well-supported on multiple versions of GCC and multiple platforms. Why is it not getting enough attention? Perhaps it needs a CatchyName instead of 'ssp'? I'll ponder this question while I'm recompiling all my executables that have an open port and the libraries they depend on."

Michael Long writes "Forgent Networks (www.forgentnetworks.com) has announced that it owns the software patent on JPEG compression technology, and has stated that it is "in contact" with computer, software, camera, and other digital imaging product manufacturers regarding licensing terms. This ambush of the digitial imaging industry will probably stand as the worst public relations nightmare a company can inflict upon itself."

scottennis writes "Yahoo is carrying a story about Iceland's plan to wean itself from fossil fuels. The article states that Iceland is giving itself 30-40 years to kick the oil habit completely. Of course some researchers estimate that in 30-40 years we won't have much of a choice."

brendano writes "I've been doing some research into the fascinating world of community networks and websites -- online places that can inform and connect people of a real-life community. They typically provide news, discussion forums, and email for local residents. There are some quite successful ones (such as the nonprofit Seattle Community Network or the Blacksburg Electronic Village), but also also ghost town-like failures that show how hard it is to get a community network/website rolling. In addition, many struggle with questions of how to get funding; whether they can be for-profit while serving the community, or be non-profit with enough money to keep going. Unlike the wireless community networks we hear about so much, these types of community networks go beyond just internet access and try to provide access to the community itself. Some, even, are being done to help build up disenfranchised communities, such as one in a housing project, or the three of HP's Digital Village project (one of whose projects I'm researching for.) I was wondering if members of the Slashdot community know of more examples of community networks, and what people think of these projects. Can real-life communities succeed in the online environment as well? How so?"

scottennis writes: "Google has yet another application: measuring the rate of decay of information on the web. By plotting the number of results at 3,6, and 12 months for a series of phrases, this study claims to have uncovered a corresponding 60-70-80 percent decay rate. Essentially, 60% of the web changes every 3 months." You may be amused by some of the phrases he notes as exceptional, too.

scottennis writes: "Google has yet another application: measuring the rate of decay of information on the web. By plotting the number of results at 3,6, and 12 months for a series of phrases, this study claims to have uncovered a corresponding 60-70-80 percent decay rate. Essentially, 60% of the web changes every 3 months." You may be amused by some of the phrases he notes as exceptional, too.

jherro writes: "Looking for the coolest case on the block? Already have enough fish tanks? Then might just want to build a PC inside of your old classic mac. Makes a great little mp3 server. Sadly, the mirror at angelfire will probably be faster than the original at Smuniverse." Finding a cheap 9" monitor would be a nice trick, too.

customsex writes: "bunnie has written a nice one with pictures documenting his adventure flashing his bios on his xbox. check it." His page also points you to the Sony vs. Connectix case regarding reverse engineering of hardware.

A just-barely-Anonymous Coward writes: "Every day, hundreds of people are discriminated against by their Internet connection, banned from video/audio downloads, video/audio streaming, gaming, webcasts, and many other everyday Internet activities. The damage starts small -- hurt feelings, a little anger -- but soon it all escalates into pure rage that often leads up into the cutting of the aggressors' broadband line. The broadband users of the internet are the ones that torment the little people. All too often they forget their true origins; where they came from back in the good old days before there were even 56k modems. This website is dedicated to stopping the hate of 56k modems. Show your support by joining the ranks." No accounting for taste, but I laughed from this end of a 53K connection to my ISP.

A just-barely-Anonymous Coward writes: "Every day, hundreds of people are discriminated against by their Internet connection, banned from video/audio downloads, video/audio streaming, gaming, webcasts, and many other everyday Internet activities. The damage starts small -- hurt feelings, a little anger -- but soon it all escalates into pure rage that often leads up into the cutting of the aggressors' broadband line. The broadband users of the internet are the ones that torment the little people. All too often they forget their true origins; where they came from back in the good old days before there were even 56k modems. This website is dedicated to stopping the hate of 56k modems. Show your support by joining the ranks." No accounting for taste, but I laughed from this end of a 53K connection to my ISP.

Lord_Pall writes: "There's a very good article on SecurityFocus about a Dutch cryptographer. He apparently has cracked the HDCP video encryption standard, but won't release the research for fear of reprisals under the DMCA." Update: 08/15 06:10 PM by J : Meanwhile, see Keith Irwin's paper which has been released despite the DMCA. Update: 08/15 07:00 PM by J : And someone else points out this old thing. Everyone who hasn't written a paper on cracking HDCP raise your hand.

mirko writes "This story is about Personal Computer Security, it describes an efficient way not to have your computer stolen, even if you let it in front of your home for some weeks (Well in this case, it finally was stolen but its owner quickly found it back). You'll need some concrete and a shovel to have your investment secured, though..." Allright, this is just funny as hell. Enjoy.

FOLICOR writes "One man's quest for the perfect cup of joe leads to a new coffee maker" Somehow I have to hope that this is fake, but it looks like he's using an led to make sure his coffee is brewed reliably. I brew mine on my stove in a syphon cheerfully referred to as The Coffee Bong. Super primitive.

The Hacker Ethic is a brilliant book.Written by young Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen, with contributions in the same volume by Linus Torvalds and Sociology Professor Manuel Castells, this little book blows away the myth that getting important things done requires stodgy and outmoded forms of organization, or a slavish devotion to work. Just the opposite -- Himanen demonstrates with modern and historical examples that there's a sea change underway in the way that work happens. (Read More.)

The Hacker Ethic author Pekka Himanen, with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells pages 232 publisher Random House rating 8.5 reviewer timothy ISBN 0375505660 summary How The Hacker Way has and will influence ways of thinking about life, the Universe, and Everything.

I admit it -- the first time I started to read this book, I made a mistake. I began not with Linus Torvalds' clever and funny introduction, or with Pekka Himanen's text (the central part of the book) but with the final section -- Manuell Castells' Epilogue, "Informationalism and the Network Society." Castells' piece, considerably longer than Torvalds' contribution, defines Informationalism ("a technological paradigm based on the augmentation of the human capacity in information processing around the twin revolutions in microelectronics and genetic engineering"), and both traces its rise and makes some predictions about its continued dominance for the near future.

Though Castells is careful to point out the distinction between information-dominated societies (which are nothing new, as he freely points out) and ones characterized by the more profound Informationalism, it took a second read of this section (after starting again from the beginning) to grasp his meaning more fully. It also took that second read to grudgingly accept Castells' inclusion of genetic engineering as an appropriate part of the shift to Informationalism.

The importance of complex, interactive and iterative information processing systems, though, is great enough that Castells seems justified in defining as a breaking point in history the emergence of such systems. Taken in context with the central part of the book, this final chapter is both less off-putting and more insightful than it seemed upon first visit.

The heart of the book, though, is Himanen's treatise on the broad implication of the work, play and life-in-general ideals which hackers have made famous both within and outside the computer world, and it's the most enjoyable part of the book.

First, be assured: Himanen uses "hacker" in the sense that nature intended -- curious, passionate inventors, many of whom happen to use computers as their primary tool of discovery -- rather than a word to mean malicious techno-vandals. Perhaps this book, already talked about in trade and general publications, will help erase the stigma of that word and replace it with the far more positive ideal of an outlook defined by creativity, fun and a desire for meaningful life experiences.

Readers will quickly discover that while The Hacker Ethic obviously has one eye on the tight triangle of recent history, present reality, and immediate future, the other scans a wide range of historical settings and ideas. The title is an allusion to Max Weber's famous work (and more famous idea) The Protestant Work Ethic, tracing back the idea of life centered around diligence and toil to the Protestant preacher Richard Baxter, and before that to the ordered and labor-centered life of the monastary. Bells (and now electronic clocks, timecards and even automatic sensors) decided when things should be done -- and more imporantly, things should be done! Idleness is against the Protest ethic, which holds steady work and its results as the ideals to strive for.

Himanen believes that the Protestant work ethic's replacement has arrived. Computer hackers happen to be the standard bearers, he says, for a whole new way of work, play and life, based around social networks, personal preferences for work environment and content, and a intermingling of work and play.

He points to a number of sources -- some of them may bring a smile, like Richard M. Stallman's Free Software Song, and the sometimes outrageous definitions in Eric S. Raymond's Jargon File -- to demonstrate the way that these non-traditional or even anti-traditional ways of thinking and doing manifest themselves among computer hackers. Hackers, especially the idealized hackers as mythologized in documents like the Jargon File but certainly not only these, tend to ignore social conventions of behavior, when those conventions get in the way of doing what they want. Because of the realities of cheap long-distance communications, electric lights allowing all-night hacking sessions, and other particulars of the electronic-dominated world which has been available to an increasing number of people for more than a generation, they've built their own rules about proper behavior on a computer, on a network, and in the real world. By so doing, they haven't created a world inhabited solely by selfish slobs -- instead, the world of the hacker has simply become one with a far more elastic (and less predictable) matrix of social and professional roles.

Computer hackers may have led the way to this, but Himanen believes that the widespread growth of Net culture is having and will have a permanent effect on the way work is looked at, and the way people approach leisure and work time. The more types of work that can be done by people collaborating and associating with each other (and the networking of the world means that more and more can), the less dependent people will be on rigid schedules, traditional workplaces and alarm bells to announce the end of lunch. In short, the hacker ethic has the potential to improve people's lives by removing the driving impulse to work unbound to real individual preferences.

That doesn't mean that life for hackers results only in advantages to them as individuals -- far from it. Throughout the book, Himanen refers the development of distributed projects, notably the Linux kernel. Despite its utterly voluntary nature, the freeform development of the kernel and of the GPLd software which made it useful resulted in a project involving millions of people. The idea that voluntary distributed actions can have such far-flung, elaborately evolved and evolving results puts the lie to the idea that only noses well rubbed by grindstones can create projects of meaning and substance. The hacker ethic is neither theoretical nor self-absorbed: it's more of a grand restatement of enlightened self-interest.

I did have one major point of contention with Himanen's central thesis, but one which did not really detract from reading the book. Throughout the text, the implication is both hinted at and stated outright that creativity is anathama to the Protestant work ethic. In chapter 7 ("Rest"), Himanen states outright:

"Creativity does not feature prominently in the Protestant ethic, the typical creations of which are the government agency and the monasterylike business enterprise. Neither one of them encourages the individual to engage in creative activity."

While a lack of creativity may be widely associated with the Protestant work ethic, its absence hardly seems implicit to it. In social behavior, unlike mathematics, a single counterexample does not necessarily disprove a theory, but there are many individuals and even entire fields of endeavor predating the emergence of hackers (or an ethic for them to claim) which show the vast potential for creative human living even within societies living undeniably within that ethic. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, I think of as a great hacker of his time: he jumped smoothly from endeavor to endeavor, and in fact exhibited many of the same characteristics that Himanen points out as shared by modern day hackers. But Franklin undeniably ascribed to the Protestant ethic. Perhaps this is mostly a semantic issue, but it never stopped nagging me.

How realistic is Himanen's assesment of changing work values? As someone who went from a relatively straight office job with timesheets, a regular desk, repetitive tasks and forehead-tightening deadlines to one with no timesheets, a desk wherever I have internet access and work that changes and flows with the day, the analysis struck me as personally insightful -- but nowhere near universally applicable, not yet. The Hacker Ethic has arrived, in fact, and to a startling degree, in certain specialized fields and among a few individuals. But offices, factories and retail stores aren't going away. Some enlightened employers have practiced (or attempted) for years to create just the kind of creative environment which would draw people to be simultaneously productive -- in whatever terms that business requires -- and passionate enough to continue for the sake of more than a paycheck.

Linus' introduction is icing on the cake -- Linus writes in the same way he does in emails to the kernel mailing list: wry, biting, self-effacing, quick. He even manages to abbreviate most complex theories of social behavior (remember Maslow's heirarchy of needs?) into just three basic human desires: Survival, social life, and entertainment. Sounds right to me.

After establishing that "survival" is usually taken care of by time one has a computer, electricity and the lower-order goods that make having a computer possible, he says (and you can remove "Linux" for a more universal statement), "The reason that Linux hackers do something is that they find it to be very interesting, and they like to share this interesting thing with others."

Linus' few pages will be just as fun to read, I think, even if his essay boils down mostly to just that single line.

A section of notes at the close of the book is a valuable addition: some of the pithiest explanations are found here, such as examples of hacker humor and a short but insightful historical overview of the development of hypertext.

And for a relatively short book, the bibliography is extensive and eclectic -- reading the list of cited works, of everything from Aristotle to Bill Joy, Plato to Max Weber -- will probably spark some reading lists to expand as well.

This book will be read, re-read and passed on -- if you're employed by someone else, I suggest reading it and (as applicable) giving your copy to your boss, former boss or future boss.

The Hacker Ethic
Preface
Prologue: What Makes Hackers Tick? aka Linus' Law, by Linus Torvalds
Part One: The Work Ethic
Chapter 1: The Hacker Work Ethic
Chapter 2: Time is Money?
Part Two: The Money Ethic
Chapter 3: Money As Motive
Chapter 4: The Academy and the Monastery
Part Three: The Nethic
Chapter 5: From Nettiquette to a Nethic
Chapter 6: The Spirit of Informationalism
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Rest
Epilogue: Informationalism and the Network Society, by Manuell Castells
Appendix: A Brief History of Computer Hackerism Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements

You can purchase The Hacker Ethic at ThinkGeek.

Slashback tonight brings you more on how to find good books, how to have your car snipped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and what's up in the world of Linux audio and video, through an interview with GStreamer developers. Enjoy!

Can you read me? Over. With both feet in the stream of continuing evolution and convergence of distributed voting, online metaknowledge and probably a few other things, Johnathan Nightingale has created a site called Canonical Tomes, lately featured on Kuro5hin.

It's a really cool way to approach the "top picks" in a given subject, and fun to browse especially in the fields you're not very familiar with: the trick is a community voting system -- visit it and pick your favorites.

It also raises the question, though, of how to avoid an early lead from remaining permanent; how do new but excellent books gain a foothold? And what about situations where the popular books aren't the best ones? Kudos to Johnathan for putting this together, now it's your turn to point out the best books in your field to others.

Gee, Wally, I can colorize you from this "Linux" machine! starlady writes "Linux.com has an interview up with the developers of GStreamer. GStreamer, as mentioned here before, is a full featured multimedia framework with functionality for everything from mp3 playback to audio and video editing."

An excerpt, quoting developer Wim Taymans: "First of all, GStreamer is a real framework. This means that it can be used for a generic media player as well as serve as the core of large multimedia render farms. The GStreamer core is built in such a way that it is media agnostic, it doesn't know or care what media data it is handling. The interpretation of the media types is entirely handled by the plug-ins."

And though everyone is excited about video, things like this will make Linux a lot more capable as an audio capturing and manipulation platform, too.

The real question is, did you get in trouble? Regarding the dangling beetle which caused the city fathers of San Francisco some small consternation, Ms Golden Gate 2001 writes: "In case you're still fretting, or wondering, here are a few first-hand pieces of info about the stunt (I hope you guys weren't really believing what you read in the papers, now were you? ;-)

• the Bug was hung by cable and nylon webbing from a two-point suspension system (check the math -- that's not so easy: you try figuring out how to sling cable from *both* sides of the bridge to hang something nicely centred!)
  
• the Bug was never in sight of any commmuter after the initial 1-minute deployment (*under* the bridge!)
  
• the first to be informed were the traffic helicopters
  
• the Ironworkers who cut it down (in minutes) thought the job was well done ("They could probably get a job as ironworkers")
  
• the Bug was stripped of nasties, and as the Ironworkers said, it's a new habitat (just like when they sink a ship to create an artificial reef, only smaller, MUCH smaller)

Not the Mother-of-all-stunts, but worthy of some kudos - maybe for the most enthusiastic bunch of hard-working students who want the world to know they love what they do (and where the heck Vancouver is!). Even the website is there to promote engineering (seriously) to students.

All that technology, and it's still nigh impossible to get the facts heard over the Brownian noise :-P At least this is a good forum for venting without swords!

P.S. It's National Engineering Week in Canada! (Look out below!)"

Slashback tonight brings you more on how to find good books, how to have your car snipped off the Golden Gate Bridge, and what's up in the world of Linux audio and video, through an interview with GStreamer developers. Enjoy!

Can you read me? Over. With both feet in the stream of continuing evolution and convergence of distributed voting, online metaknowledge and probably a few other things, Johnathan Nightingale has created a site called Canonical Tomes, lately featured on Kuro5hin.

It's a really cool way to approach the "top picks" in a given subject, and fun to browse especially in the fields you're not very familiar with: the trick is a community voting system -- visit it and pick your favorites.

It also raises the question, though, of how to avoid an early lead from remaining permanent; how do new but excellent books gain a foothold? And what about situations where the popular books aren't the best ones? Kudos to Johnathan for putting this together, now it's your turn to point out the best books in your field to others.

Gee, Wally, I can colorize you from this "Linux" machine! starlady writes "Linux.com has an interview up with the developers of GStreamer. GStreamer, as mentioned here before, is a full featured multimedia framework with functionality for everything from mp3 playback to audio and video editing."

An excerpt, quoting developer Wim Taymans: "First of all, GStreamer is a real framework. This means that it can be used for a generic media player as well as serve as the core of large multimedia render farms. The GStreamer core is built in such a way that it is media agnostic, it doesn't know or care what media data it is handling. The interpretation of the media types is entirely handled by the plug-ins."

And though everyone is excited about video, things like this will make Linux a lot more capable as an audio capturing and manipulation platform, too.

The real question is, did you get in trouble? Regarding the dangling beetle which caused the city fathers of San Francisco some small consternation, Ms Golden Gate 2001 writes: "In case you're still fretting, or wondering, here are a few first-hand pieces of info about the stunt (I hope you guys weren't really believing what you read in the papers, now were you? ;-)

• the Bug was hung by cable and nylon webbing from a two-point suspension system (check the math -- that's not so easy: you try figuring out how to sling cable from *both* sides of the bridge to hang something nicely centred!)
  
• the Bug was never in sight of any commmuter after the initial 1-minute deployment (*under* the bridge!)
  
• the first to be informed were the traffic helicopters
  
• the Ironworkers who cut it down (in minutes) thought the job was well done ("They could probably get a job as ironworkers")
  
• the Bug was stripped of nasties, and as the Ironworkers said, it's a new habitat (just like when they sink a ship to create an artificial reef, only smaller, MUCH smaller)

Not the Mother-of-all-stunts, but worthy of some kudos - maybe for the most enthusiastic bunch of hard-working students who want the world to know they love what they do (and where the heck Vancouver is!). Even the website is there to promote engineering (seriously) to students.

All that technology, and it's still nigh impossible to get the facts heard over the Brownian noise :-P At least this is a good forum for venting without swords!

P.S. It's National Engineering Week in Canada! (Look out below!)"

Pyr0Cantha writes "Umm.......found this on New Scientist quite interesting that in 1786 it was discovered that frog muscles twitched when an electrical current was put through them, only now it has been put to use."

dcshoes writes: "Nonlinear Atom Optics uses laser light to cool atoms to one millionth a degree Kalvin. At this low temperature, atom wavelengths are elongated, making the wave nature of atoms more easy to observe, and enable scientists to focus, reflect, defract, etc, atom beams. Atom lasers could lead to advances in, among other things, Nanolithography and Holography. Cool. Literally."

Java Pimp writes "USA Today is reporting "America's first bullet train pulled out of Union Station on time Thursday morning. The snub-nosed Acela Express made the Washington-to-New York trip in two hours, 26 minutes, arriving two minutes ahead of schedule and setting an Amtrak speed record when it hit 135 mph in New Jersey. The old record was 125 mph. The train was expected to reach its top speed of 150 mph later in the day on the trip from New York to Boston.""

Scareduck writes: "We've all heard much of @Home's lousy service. Ed Foster's column today in InfoWorld discusses a fellow who got his @Home e-mail account pulled for posting @Home internal documents to a Usenet newsgroup explaining how tech reps are to assume problems are always on the customer's side. He subsequently posted them on various free Web services (WebJump and Angelfire) only to discover his pages mysteriously disappear. @Home earns bonus villain points for invoking the purely evil DMCA in their justification of this thuggish behavior."

Aaditya Sood asks: "I'm working on a DSP ^[?] project and am currently hacking away at the JPEG ^[?] algorithim. However I can't find the technical specs for it even though I have IJG's pseudo-C code. I hail from India so net time is not cheap for me. Could someone please point me to some resources on the Web which pertain to JPEG information?"

Lets start this off with some homework: we were nominated for a 2000 Webby in Community. Please go vote for us (requires annoying login, but please do it anyway! I want a crappy little trophy!) Now with the 'biz outta the way, brainsik pointed us to the Brainshaker: a headmounted subwoofer that looks like it would make Quake a bit to real. Plastik noted a web filter guaranteed to offend the conservative and humorless. But it makes reading Slashdot damn entertaining. And if you're interesting in violating most religions, vkulkarn found an "Escort" who apparently reads Slashdot (will she go out with CowboyNeal?) Speaking of religion, Zippy noted that I am apparently a prophet in the Church of The Enlightenment , along with Jay Stile of Stileproject . Illiad, from Userfriendly.org is a bard. webword sent us CalculusGirls.com which combines 2 of the many things I don't understand. Andy Lester noted that Brunching Shuttlecocks has a book on "Fuzzy Logic Functions", in the style of O'Reilly. yek401 noted that his english professor builds barbie doll cyborgs: god bless tenure ;) Trenchcoat Steve warned us about Moon Land Registry which claims to be selling land on the moon for $10/acre: you even get a deed and mineral rights... and it might be legal! Gravey noted that their are two new Reboot movies going into production. For you conspiracy theorists, backtick noted that everyone's favorite software monopoly might be getting into the furniture biz along with Lazyboy. SgtPepper pointed us to RFC 2795 which "describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters" ucsimon noted that LegoLand in California just gota liquor license. Mind you after a few shots of vodka, finding a 2x2 blue block takes a lot longer. Let's wrap up with jyuter's note that Comedy Central has vid clips of the south park kids doing Python's parrot sketch in Quicktime or Real.

ErGoNoMiC wrote to us with one of those really, really strange polls that people like to conduct. Anyway, the poll was performed involving various European nations and their...computer habits. I'm missing the Americans in there - I figure we're most likely to franchise our computer and sell it to someone.

Here at Slashdot we tend to get certain things submitted a lot. Big companies going after "The Little Guy", especially regarding domain names seems to be one of them. Sometimes I feel bad for people because they owned trademarked names, but it looks like they are just squatting, but what about your name? Henley.com is being chased by Don Henley (thanks Netizen) and Reznor.com is owned by AJ Reznor being chased by Thomas & Betts. In each case, a person registered the name given to them at birth, but now a corporation wants to take it because they have a trademark. How do you protect your name?

Ledge Kindred asks: "I am looking for a distributed filesystem to run on my Linux boxes at home. I have several and most of the "extra" space on each one is "going to waste" - I'd like to be able to combine it all into a single network-able filesystem. How?" Click below for more.

"So far the two (three?) solutions that had the most promise are: AFS or Arla, and Coda.

The reasons against: AFS is commercial and I don't want to pay $15,000 in licenses just for a convenience to me. Arla still appears to be extremely alpha quality, even for a Linux hacker used to seeing major parts of his kernel labeled "alpha" or "beta". I had Coda up and running for a couple of days before I ran into a fairly severe flaw in the fundamental design that showed it to be inappropriate for what I want it to do. (But Coda is still the coolest thing since individually-wrapped cheese slices, and if you don't need to worry about that little problem, it's cooler than sex.)

I've found lots of references to the "GFS" project which is not at all what I want, and here and there mentions of other projects such as "DFS", "xFS" and a distributed filesystem for Beowulf clusters but no further details, URLs or most importantly - code - could I dig up.

I don't need RAID, redundancy, failover, or anything like that. I only need to take these extra machines on my home network and make all their extra disk space look like a single volume on the network. Support for Linux as a client is, obviously, essential, but I also have Windows, BeOS, *BSD and Solaris machines on my network, so clients for those would be appreciated but not necessary. Since this is just for me at home, (yes, I've got all that crap on my network at home - so I'm a little crazy) I'd rather stick with free software. Is there anything that can do this? "

If not, then it sounds like it would be an interesting project to work on. The ability to be able to harness the spare disk space across a private network can only be a good thing.