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This can get confusing. There's one "Bono" who's pro-sharing, and there's another "Bono" who was (and whose widow is) strongly anti-sharing. In fact, the confusion has even inspired some bad jokes about volunteer legal work: is it possible for an attorney to fight the expansion of copyright law "pro bono"?

"The gnu, also known as the wildebeest, is a striking animal native to Africa. It has a lifespan of up to 20 years, and is constantly on the move. Gnu are not the fastest of animals, and are therefore important prey for lions, hyenas, and other predators."

Quite being lazy and write your own book.

For books, that may be possible, but for musical works, I'm not so sure. The standard for copying under United States copyright law is substantial similarity, and courts have found that matching four notes of another song's hook is more than enough to make one melody substantially similar to another (Handel v. Silver). To match four notes, given that what key they're played in is irrelevant, you have to match the pitch interval from one note to the next, and the time interval from one note to the next. There are fewer than 50,000 possible melodic hooks (read this page for details).

So how is it possible to write a song without stepping on somebody else's copyright?

Quite being lazy and write your own book.

For books, that may be possible, but for musical works, I'm not so sure. The standard for copying under United States copyright law is substantial similarity, and courts have found that matching four notes of another song's hook is more than enough to make one melody substantially similar to another (Handel v. Silver). To match four notes, given that what key they're played in is irrelevant, you have to match the pitch interval from one note to the next, and the time interval from one note to the next. There are fewer than 50,000 possible melodic hooks (read this page for details).

So how is it possible to write a song without stepping on somebody else's copyright?

Kingdom Hearts

More like "I Got You Babe".

Ehrgeiz

Now that was a good fighting game, better than C(r)apcom's Street Fighter. But you have to mention where Ehrgeiz came from: it was essentially a texture-mapped version of Square's earlier Tobal No. 1, with obstacles.

Of course, as with all "breaks" of cryptographic algorithms out there, the Courtois-Pieprzyk XL/XSL attack on AES was nothing but an academic break. From what I heard of it, to break a 128-bit AES key you still need to do approximately 2^100 encryptions, 1.26e30 encryptions, which is impossible even for the NSA. For Serpent (which is still widely considered to be the AES candidate with the highest security margin), the 256-bit key would still require something like 2^200 encryptions, still impossible unless you could get every sub-atomic particle in the universe to do a billion encryptions every second! I think the same is true if you had AES with the full key strength.

No, even if the breaks were true, I'd still be confident in the security of my AES-encrypted files. I'd start thinking of other alternatives, sure, but I won't go back to using triple-DES.

You still can.

I'm starting to think that the returns by allowing privacy are something like the Laffer curve with piracy along the x-axis and benefit along the y-axis; by allowing no piracy, then you don't benefit, nor do you benefit by having all copies of your software pirated. However, if you give some leeway and allow some of the copies of your software to be pirated, then it gives you maximum benefit. Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that the whole piracy vs. benefit graph is more reminiscent of a Neo-Laffer curve, where there are so many possible factors which can affect it that it is impossible to tell in advance what effect piracy will have.

Surely, that implies that you only record your own songs

What if, by coincidence, your so-called "own songs" happen to be "substantially similar" to a previously published musical composition? Substantial similarity is the standard for copying under United States copyright law, and this article shows just how easy it is for substantial similarity to kick in.

So some artists distribute their work legally on P2P networks.

Legally? Are you sure? How much did they pay for the underlying musical compositions? And don't tell me they wrote them themselves.

Wouldn't it be much simpler and more convenient just to publish a URL and serve files with http?

No. For one thing, hosting of big files costs money. Look at the bandwidth alone: 80 MB for an album, times however many listeners.

People sometimes suggest that mirroring files saves bandwidth, but that can be done with http as well

You can't have your fans mirror your files if most residential Internet access providers block incoming requests on port 80.

What you want is multicast, and you're not going to get multicast unless and until the ISPs figure out how to charge for that.

Um, no. You've just described NAS - Network Attached Storage. Shared storage from NAS devices appears as NFS (or Samba, Mac, or whatever) and you can mount it on any client.

A SAN - Storage Area Network - is when you have lots of RAID storage being shared by several servers. Each server believes it is directly attached to a physical disk, when actually it's just getting one or more slices of the pooled RAID units.

Um, no. You've just described NAS - Network Attached Storage. Shared storage from NAS devices appears as NFS (or Samba, Mac, or whatever) and you can mount it on any client.

A SAN - Storage Area Network - is when you have lots of RAID storage being shared by several servers. Each server believes it is directly attached to a physical disk, when actually it's just getting one or more slices of the pooled RAID units.

He had created a pseudonym previously as a Cage with a different first name

Last name Cage... Postmodern composer named John Cage... Mortal Kombat character named Johnny Cage, who cameoed in the unreleased video game Indeterminacy 64...

He had created a pseudonym previously as a Cage with a different first name

Last name Cage... Postmodern composer named John Cage... Mortal Kombat character named Johnny Cage, who cameoed in the unreleased video game Indeterminacy 64...

Is it out *somewhere*? Then it's out.

Do you expect all game players to hop on an airplane to fly to the appropriate region every time they want to play a video game? Playing "video game creator for playstation" that way would be much more expensive than just writing a game from scratch on a PC. And no, you can't just import the games because in some countries, copyright owners have the exclusive right to import copies of their works.

Besides, it's a lot easier to learn C++ than it is to learn Japanese.

The original Starfox for the SNES was called "Starwing" in Europe due to the naming conflict.

Trademarks are easy to get around: just change "Star Fox 64" to "Lylat Wars" on the box and title screen. Copyrights, on the other hand... How are you supposed to release a Mickey Mouse game if you can't get permission from Disney in a particular market? Are you supposed to re-do all character models? Re-doing the music may not even be possible because you'll just land on another copyrighted melody.

Croup (kr??p), n. [F. croupe hind quarters,
croup, rump, of German or Icel. origin; cf. Icel. kryppa hump; akin to Icel. kroppr. Cf. Crop.]

The hinder part or buttocks of certain quadrupeds, especially of a horse; hence, the place behind the saddle.

© Webster 1913.

Croup (kr??p), n. [F. croupe hind quarters,
croup, rump, of German or Icel. origin; cf. Icel. kryppa hump; akin to Icel. kroppr. Cf. Crop.]

The hinder part or buttocks of certain quadrupeds, especially of a horse; hence, the place behind the saddle.

© Webster 1913.

HOWTO "Now we've got semiconductor grade rods, 99.9999999999% pure. Smell them, touch them, caress them. Now, SMASH THE CRAP OUT OF THEM! Yes, you heard me. We need to refine those suckers some more! Melt that crushed up shit in the oven again. Remember, use small amounts. Introduce a single monocrystal grain of sugar into the melted silicon. This is your monocrystal seed that will found your new silicon nation. This will take a few days. You are permitted to take a few drugs at this point in time. There's still a long way to go but it's worthwhile. "

This reminded me of the time I read Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems.

if you sniff their versions properly you can redirect them to a page that has links to upgrade their browsers.

According to the Mozilla 1.2a release notes, its system requirements include the following:

• Intel pentium class 233 MHz (or faster) processor
• 64 MB RAM

Many users of the World Wide Web do not have the money to purchase such equipment. They make do with their old Pentium 133 with 32 MB of RAM that runs Netscape 4.x. It would cost real money to upgrade their browser, and it's illegal for many people to earn money.

after playing Kingdom Hearts yesterday

Unfortunately, I won't be able to enjoy Kingdom Hearts because 1. the PS2 is still too expensive, and 2. I'm boycotting the instigators of the Bono Act.

All public transit in the Portland, Oregon metro area has some sort of tracking hardware installed, with several methods available for the public to view it.

Several years ago, TriMet (the main public transit service in Portland) installed GPS/radio units on every bus in the system. Originally, these units only gave information to drivers and those transit system managing folk, enabling them to know the exact location of each bus. The units are mounted next to the farebox facing the driver, and display the current time (I always set my watch from that), how early or late the bus is, and if the bus is on route. The boxes beep and alert the driver if the bus runs more than 1 minute early or 5 minutes late, or if it deviates from route. In the last year or two, they have begun to install 4-line LED displays at major bus transfer points, which indicates the time until the next few busses. A typical display might read something like "15 to Gateway TC due; 6 to Gertz Rd 6 mins; 15 to Gateway TC 8 mins; 15 to Gateway TC 4:50" (The display goes to "due" when the bus is within a block or two of the stop; any bus due to arrive more than 15 minutes from the current time has the scheduled arrival time rather than countdown displayed). This information is also available on the web for all bus lines at all stops at a page on the TriMet site. I'm not aware of telephone access to this information, though schedules are available from an automated phone system.

On the TriMet MAX light rail, the information is obtained from loops buried under the tracks. Time until next train arrival (Similar display to what was depicted above, with Red Line or Blue line and one of a few destination endpoints in place) is displayed at a few major stops. This is unfortunately not as accurate as the GPS system, and can be sometimes several minutes off. I heard one story where a bridge malfunction trapped all the Red Line trains on the wrong side of the river, yet the displays would count down to the arrival until "Red Line to Airport: Due" would come and pass and no Red Line train would come. This is obvious a serious breakdown in the system in a number of ways, and really shows that a public address system (something our city's transit lacks) is necessary. No matter how good the system, it will fail eventually. (For another example of that, read this amusing story about a conspiracy of a bus door, a mailbox, and safety mechanisms getting a bus stuck at one stop for several minutes.)

Finally, on the Portland Streetcar, a tram line overseen by the City of Portland rather than the regional TriMet organization, each streetcar has a NextBus unit onboard, which works by means of GPS. Perhaps the most comprehensive example of this sort of information available in Portland, every single streetcar stop (with the exception of perhaps two or three system which have no practical access to power and/or telecom) has a two-line LED. The display rotates between displaying: the current time, the NextBus URL, "Portland Streetcar: No Smoking on Platform", and the time until the next two streetcar arrivals (e.g. "Streetcar due in 3min & 18min"). This information is also available on the NextBus website for every stop in the system, and I believe this information is also available via WAP.

If you look at CPU history: A timeline of microprocessors which is an E2node I just wrote up a couple days ago, you can make some inferences about the progression of the POWER and PowerPC CPUs. Unfortunately I never did find a good architecural timeline on IBM's site.

Look at the screenshots and imagine how immersive and beautiful it will be.

Look at the FAQ and imagine how expensive it will be, alienating many Blizzard fans who buy games with an allowance from their parents because they aren't yet old enough to circumvent somewhat oppressive child labor laws. Not only will it cost $60 for the software plus more for service^W expansion packs, it looks like at least $10 per month for an account.

It gets even worse for Final Fantasy XI, which (in addition to a PS2) effectively requires the Linux Kit (for the hard drive and broadband adapter), plus the game, plus a subscription for each character. Imagine paying real money for a Phoenix Down to revive your characters.

A good 110kg I reckon.

Italy had it right in the 13th Century. The Venetian equivalent of patents ... had 10 year lifespans.

The U.S. equivalent of patents nominally has a 20 year lifespan after filing. There are effectively 17 years of protection because it typically takes three years or so to get a patent approved.

<devilsadvocate>
What makes you think a 10-year patent term is so much better than a 17-year term? And what makes people think that the 19-year term suggested by Thomas Jefferson for both patents and copyrights is better than life plus 70, which sounds more like a prison sentence?
</devilsadvocate>

I think that [the postal "notary"] is/was a valid form of copyright that many aspiring musicians use.

Nowadays, copyright protects both unpublished and published inventions for life + n years. (Currently n = 70 in the United States and the European Union and 50 in the rest of the Berne Convention world, but most Slashdot readers who have replied to my comments believe that life plus 70 is much too long, and there are efforts in the U.S. court system to change the term.) If you register a copyright with the Library of Congress, you get more power against alleged infringers.

However, no copyright registration can save you from the fact that some publisher is going to sue you, claiming that the song you think is original is actually "substantially similar" to an existing copyrighted musical work. U.S. federal courts have found substantial similarity in four notes. And even if they lose, the cost of legal representation has bankrupted you.

If only he were using an open-source format for his letters....

The actual facts behind the McDonald's coffee lawsuit

What if it's MY music? I cannot share it?

No, you cannot share it, because the music you think you wrote probably isn't your music. It belongs to the music publisher who published the particular sequence of four notes before you did. Under the "substantial similarity" standard used by United States courts, there are fewer than 50,000 possible distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, and there are hundreds of thousands of copyrighted songs published by major music publishers who have cross-licensing agreements with one another. Do the math. What's the probability of avoiding a lawsuit? What's the probability of winning if you can't afford legal representation?

50,000 possibile melodies? pfft

your own link [everything2.com] has a post about the possibile melodies, and it concludes (among other things) that there are quire a few more than 50,000 possibile melodies (and if there were so few, the could be very easily categorized, and music would not appeal to the wide range of people that it does!)

as the point of this post was the legality, 3 - 4 notes thing ... well, think of many classical music pieces -- subtle but many have portions that are very similar to others (maybe in a different key or octave, but are still very similar) even though their copyrights have unduly run out (anyone can make a recording of "Ode to Joy" of they want -- it's completely legal.

as for the 'how can anyone write music' -- the possibilities of combinations are not endless, but are so high that to reuse something exactly would likely be intentional.

Don't the major labels record rap music and sell it at a profit

Yes.

without giving a cent

Cross-licensing agreements exist among the major record labels. These are analogous to what happens in other industries, where the big players pool their patents to keep newcomers out.

How many notes do you have to copy before it stops being fair use and starts being plagarism?

In legal theory, you infringe copyright when you copy enough to create a "substantial similarity." In practice, that's about four notes.

Is it plagarism if the individual notes of your composition are sampled from some other song rather than played anew in a studio?

They are "played anew" on a digital audio workstation, and they still infringe the songwriter's copyright.

Is a song a "copy" if a stock riff common to many songs of the form happens to be sampled from a commercial recording rather than played anew in a studio - and this can be identified by computer processing but NOT by a human ear (even a well-trained one)?

That's why the developers of the first PC clone BIOS made sure to employ and document clean room methods when writing a binary-compatible replacement for the IBM PC BIOS.

These are not rhetorical questions. Some of them have already been litigated.

Links would have been useful.

Why don't these people put their time to some constructive use and learn how to write actual music on their own

Could it perhaps be because songwriters either are close to running out of unique melodies or already have run out of unique melodies? (There exist fewer than 50,000 possible melodies; read this article to see why.)

Most MP3 files downloaded via a P2P service are illegal no matter what. However, possession of a copy of one of these recordings is illegal even if you have purchased a CD because they're "derivative works" of 1. a musical work and 2. a sound recording. Copyright owners have won infringement lawsuits over four notes from a musical work and over one note from a sound recording. (The latter link will tell you that the four-note rule does not apply, but the four-note rule applies to musical works, which are independent of any recording of such works.)

When there are fewer than 50,000 possible melodies, how can anybody write new music? "Apparently, they just do" does not answer the question.

Certainly anything that the Bono Act falls under is going to be next to impossible to find.

Here's your birthday present: AOL Time Warner owns the copyright on the song "Happy Birthday to You".

In addition, nobody can release his or her own recording of "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin (first published in early 1923) without permission of the Gershwin estate. Without the Bono Act, this work would have fallen into the public domain on January 1, 1999.

In fact, under one interpretation of copyright law, it has become nearly impossible even to write your own songs because all the melodies are taken. (Please read the argument thoroughly before rejecting it.)

NEWS: Eldred's side has posted the final reply brief in the Bono Act case.

Summary of evidence against Osama bin Laden in 9/11 terror attacks

Chronology of Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Summary of evidence against Osama bin Laden in 9/11 terror attacks

Chronology of Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Well I know its probably rediculous that I don't know what Microsoft-baiting is, but since I don't I tried to form a definition from everything2

Microsoft-baiting...

Microsoft
(thing) by fondue (12 hr) (print) ? 1 C! Thu Jun 22 2000 at 23:09:22

A very big company indeed. Microsoft actually makes more money from playing the stock market than from software these days...[shortened for length]...Microsoft do not, at present, produce any products that I would term "good". Define good by any criteria that fit that area of the market. This includes their optical mouse, touted as a great innovation (which it might be - for HP). The Windows platform (all 6 or 7 mutually incompatible fragments of it) is still used by me for some things because, while it is deplorable for many reasons*, it does do a large range of client-side tasks relatively bearably.... [shortened for length] ...The other point is that Microsoft's business practices are indefensible. Muddying the water with politics or does not alter the fact that while they profit, everyone else suffers. They sunk upwards of $500 million dollars into trying to destroy Netscape. They are supremely arrogant - their insufferable belief that they have done no wrong, and their persistence in commiting large-scale crime dwarf the posturing of even the hardest Un*x zealot. (Their shady financial activities also dwarf any half-assed attempt at philanthropy by their top brass.)

In the US, they've bought enough senators (or is it congressmen? I can never remember) to keep the government at arms length...[shortened for length]

Baiting -
(idea) by Nutloaf (2 y) (print) ? Sun Apr 02 2000 at 04:51:08

A sport played by bored teenagers everywhere. The idea is to enter a chat room or instant message conversation, and attempting to attract idiots to have cybersex with you. The minds of the victims are subtly (or not-so-subtly) played with, for the enjoyment of the baiter. Popularized by www.baiting.org

So I guess Microsoft-baiting would be something similar to:

A sport played by microsoft teenagers everywhere to enter a chat room, or IM conversation and attempt to attract idiots with their cloned software and bad innovation to get others to have cybersex with them while muddying the water with politics and crushing their competitors. Playing the minds of the victims (most likely the consumers) for the enjoyment of themselves. While using the bought government to keep the law at bay!

hmmm... seems like a decent reason to fire him, plus that seems like an odd thing to do for an open source supporter!

hehe

*** /flush
"carma go down the drain!"
***

Every day it seems like things are getting more like Shadowrun.

It's not about ego, it's about the fact that having beautiful things around you makes you feel better [...]

It's not about vocabulary, it's about the fact that having a good command of the language makes you speak better.

http://www.everything2.com/?node=cvs

Over at Everything2, in the two and a half years it's existed, we've had a few permanent departures or deaths of well-known members of the community. Now, E2 isn't anything like an MMPORG, unless you consider the subjective assembly of a encyclopedia of culture a "game".

But the community is solid there, and an essential part of E2. A special subset of the "nodespace" is carved out just for that community to recognize itself. Gatherings take place in cities large and small so that regulars and irregulars can meet face-to-face. People who stop contributing to the database entirely sometimes stick around for the friendships.

So when a regular needs to leave the site for good, or we learn one has died recently, even those who didn't know him or her closely are affected. Homenodes and daylogs suddenly fill with memories of the person, or at the very least an acknowledgement of his or her contributions, both of knowledge and friendship. A "virtual funeral" wouldn't work there, or at least it wouldn't work the same way. It's more like an unofficial wake. I think that if the Slashdot editorial pool suffered a similar loss, we'd all gather in one forum to do the same thing.

Things like this are good to record, and to pass around. It lets people know that online community is still community, that friends exist in places where we may never meet them. Many will look at things like this and find it disturbing or unnatural; I'd argue that the opposite is true.

What we need is a big fucking mirror and eventually flash all areas of earth like iridium flares.

Oh yeah, they were strange... I remember some strange guy in a dark room walking around saying "Zelda? ZELDA?? Tektites, Octorocks, Leevers, Peahats? Zelda!"

For a trip down memory lane...

How bout the classic Zelda commercial. I can still remember some strange guy in a dark room walking around saying "Zelda? ZELDA?? Tektites, Octorocks, Leevers, Peahats? Zelda!"

For a walk down memory lane...

This is a great site. If anyone wants to learn C# coming from a C/C++ or Java background I send them here.

Much better comparisons here.

I lived in Ketchikan, Alaska for 7 years, and currently reside only a small distance away in Juneau. Even though there are glaciers about, South East Alaska is actually a rain forest. Certainly not a tropical one, but the region is quite moist and temperate.

If you like you can Czech out my E2 nodes on the area: Ketchikan, AK, and Juneau, AK.

I heard about the helicopter crash on the local news, but I did not know anything about the those who passed away until I just now visited Slashdot.

A tragedy. But I doubt there's a prettier place on this Earth to pass into death.

I lived in Ketchikan, Alaska for 7 years, and currently reside only a small distance away in Juneau. Even though there are glaciers about, South East Alaska is actually a rain forest. Certainly not a tropical one, but the region is quite moist and temperate.

If you like you can Czech out my E2 nodes on the area: Ketchikan, AK, and Juneau, AK.

I heard about the helicopter crash on the local news, but I did not know anything about the those who passed away until I just now visited Slashdot.

A tragedy. But I doubt there's a prettier place on this Earth to pass into death.

• Instead of just having moderator points, assign Operator rating points based on karma. This way, the boneheadedness (or admirability) of the operator can be determined.
• When a news story is submitted, change slash to have an "Are you Sure" page, which would do a fulltext search to try and find matches within the past few days. This'll give them one more chance to see if the story is a dupe. If it's done, Operators won't have to actually READ Slashdot. Fancy that! More time to work on Everything2 articles!
• If an Operator submits too many duplicate posts (Hi CmdrTaco!), make him strip down naked, and run through the streets with only a Plush Tux Penguin to hide his/her genetalia.
• Make the HREF for the poster point to goatse.cx for two days whenever they post a dupe.
• Give karma points for being a troll when responding to a duplicate article... Fringe Benefit: The Trolls will only come out from under their bridge when the Ops pull a boner.

I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

Ever read the short story Melancholy Elephants [baen.com]?

I have. It's especially terrifying when taken along with the fact that a fellow can get sued for copying a four note melody from an existing song, and that there exist fewer than 50,000 such melodies.