Slashdot Mirror

That's the most disinterested, apathetic attitude I've seen in a long time. Get over it? Is that how you respond to valid criticisms?

Yah. So?

Michael

(twajs)

When's the last time a D.C. newspaper did a deep and dirty expose on congress, senate or white house, that had anything to do with the politics? Nope, they're too busy to dig up sex stories, leaving the pols to do their business unaudited.

You probably meant s/too busy to dig up/too busy digging up/, but case in point: many thought of the conflict in Kosovo as a coverup for Clinton's sex scandals. Turns out the sex scandals were themselves a coverup; without them, Congress would never have got away with passing the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by a freaking voice vote.

We do have to work on our article submission system. There needs to be some sort of volunteer "slashdot council" who screens the material.

You mean like Kuro5hin, where YOU choose the stories.

Yes, I'm anticipating the obligatory jokes about Pseudo_Intellectual

Now, throw in the fact that nintendo has Pokemon, Mario and Zelda, and Ps2 has GT3, while Xbox has Halo. Nintendo is gonna have the kids market in a lockbox, with the key thrown away.

Pokemon? PS1 has Digimon. Mario? PS1 has Crash. Zelda? PS1 has Diablo. Other games? Nintendo's quality has been falling (minigames in Mario Party 3 aren't as fun as those in MP2 and MP1 with Thinsulate gloves; Dr. Mario 64 is much cheesier than the new tetris). All MS needs to do get a mascot; will it "embrace and extend" Tux?

...and the Xbox, in spite of "Halo", really doesn't have anything to compare to established game line that Nintendo is going to roll out for the Gamecube.

The only reason that Xbox or PS2 can't have a "Mario" or a "Zelda" or a "Pokemon" is that Nintendo has trademarks on those names. So Sony can call its Mario game "Crash" and its Pokemon clone "Digimon" (although in the case of digimon, it's actually the other way around).

Sure, you can make a falling blocks game; you just can't call it Tetris.

Heya, sounds a bit like the setup on everything2.com, where putting words in [brackets] takes you to that node of the database. It's done manually, not automatically, though.

I've been a member of Everything2 since the days of Everything1. I have yet to find a more eclectic community there. E2 is the type of site that lets you just get lost in all the content, while allowing one-click transitions from the historical to the fantastic. While the editors weed out any nodes detrimental to the database, it is an example of how the world can create an enormous self-managed site.

So if Disney was thinking about family friendly materials, why did they not simply release 'Castle in the Sky' instead?

Disney didn't release Laputa because it would compete with the company's own similar Atlantis movie.

is quick to fire off the lawyers in any direction where there is a little guy to be squashed for painting Donald Duck on the side of his daycare center or otherwise depriving the mother ship of a dollar of profit.

This copyright will not expire in our lifetimes. Unless the Supremes get involved, DisneyCo will keep buying bad law from Congress, such as a 20-year copyright term extension every 20 years and a law making 8-bit XOR encryption unbreakable.

is quick to fire off the lawyers in any direction where there is a little guy to be squashed for painting Donald Duck on the side of his daycare center or otherwise depriving the mother ship of a dollar of profit.

This copyright will not expire in our lifetimes. Unless the Supremes get involved, DisneyCo will keep buying bad law from Congress, such as a 20-year copyright term extension every 20 years and a law making 8-bit XOR encryption unbreakable.

Hey,

the science major today should be what classical Greek and Latin were in the 19th century, and the liberal-arts major was in the 20th: the union card required to enter the professional world.

Oh, I disagree. I find that engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.

Michael

"You will call off this hounding consumers over mp3s and CD-Rs. You will go on live TV and say that there is no problem whatsoever, and that all your analyses turned up negative.
"You need us. We buy your CD's, we go to your concerts, we put food on your table and tip your chauffeurs. So DON'T FUCK WITH US!!"

Maybe I'm watching too much Fight Club lately.

The legislation is very clear, if I borrow a CD from you and make a copy of it on my "tax paid" CDR I am breaking no law.

Perhaps in this instance, but not in every. Please see the Iowa drug stamp tax for a good counterexample.

(Pinocchio, however... why?!)

First of all, Di$neyCo doesn't own the copyright on Pinocchio.

Toad's real name is Kinopio (scroll down to Player Select). If Kinopio made it in, why not rival Pinocchio? Pinocchio was expected to make it into Super Mario RPG (I have the Nintendo Power back issues to prove it) but was replaced at the last minute.

here the corporations own the copyrights for 75 years after we die

Officially, in the United States, your heirs own your copyrights for 70 years after the end of the calendar year in which you die, and copyrights on works of corporate authorship last for 95 years. In practice, because the copyright industry lobbies for (and gets) a 20-year copyright term extension every 20 years, we have perpetual copyright on every work first published on or after January 1, 1923, except for certain works with defective notices or pre-1964 works whose owners did not renew their 28-year copyrights for an additional 67 years. International copyright is worse: for example, the British government is free to enact a specific perpetual copyright on Peter Pan. Please read my writeup about the Sonny Bono Act for more information.

and the patents last for centuries as well.

No. Virtually all patents last no longer than 20 years after filing, period. Congress rarely grants extensions on individual drugs' patents.

On the bright side that means 15-20 dollar generic [controller]s.

Not if Nintendo's controllers encrypt all communications. Because Nintendo owns copyright on the boot code and some game software, and because the games check for the presence of a controller so that the players can Press Start, the controllers effectively control access to a copyrighted work as required by 17 USC 1201. Nintendo is well aware of the DMCA; the company produced only cartridge systems (hiding behind mask work copyright, which prohibits backing up semiconductor ROMs for 10 years after first publication) until TW and Disney bought the DMCA (which prohibits backing up encrypted discs for 95 years after first publication). Even though 17 USC 1201 provides an exception for reverse engineering for interoperability, Nintendo's unlimited legal budget will allow the company to bring baseless lawsuits and filibuster the trial until the smaller company has run out of money. Just look at Mad Catz, a manufacturer of popular independently produced gaming accessories: hey caved to MS and paid the protec^H^H^H^H^H^H licensing fees to produce official Xbox controllers

Remember the first time you saw someone perform "The Jump" shortcut at Wario's Stadium?

A well-timed jump over the first wall on the left is dramatic and adds a bit of tactics (should I try the jump and lose a couple seconds if I fail, or should I just race?), but a seven second lap (jump over the left wall, then jump over the wall again, making sure to go around the left pole of the s/f line, repeat, repeat for a 22 second run) is just cheap.

Or being knocked off a ramp by a well-timed red shell?

I remember what part of Wario Stadium you're talking about, but I normally did it with a row of banana peels. With a red shell, it a was good comeback tactic, but with an unstoppable Blue Shell Of Death(TM), it was cheap.

But what about MK64's cheesy Battle Mode music, the invisible banana peels in 150cc multiplayer, or the other couple dozen bugs and design flaws in the Mario Kart games? Perhaps this is why Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA is going back to the SMK roots. (/me starts a petition to get Kamek the Magikoopa and Pinocchio the non-Disney little wooden boy added to Mario Kart 4 for GCN.)

Is it legal to own ROMs?

In the United States, software stored on semiconductor mask ROMs has additional copyright restrictions: for ten years after December 31 after the initial release of the software, you can't make a backup unless you're reverse engineering the game for interoperability.

Excuse me, but I am legally permitted to download MAME ROMs for any arcade machine that I currently own.

WRONG. Title 17 USC (copyright law) does not provide a "second copy exception"; it does provide a "backup exception" if you dump your own older ROM sets. But programs newer than 10 years old stored in ROMs are subject to additional mask work copyright restrictions that apply only to semiconductor ROM chips. You can't even backup recent ROMs you own unless you perform bona fide reverse engineering on them. In other words, the MAME developers can dump them, but you can't.

Just a quick question. What, exactly, do you mean to by your reference to "MAC", and how does whatever "MAC" stands for in this case connect to file system protection? Do you mean that the file system protection is somehow (how?) related to ethernet MAC addresses, or is this some acronym i am not familiar with?

(p.s. once you've explained this definition/use of MAC, maybe could you add an entry to everything2 explaining it there? ^_^ just checking.)

I have Metropolis on DVD right in front of me. I'd consider that old, especially considering it's not even a 'talkie'.

This could be just the thing we need to show that the DMCA is poorly written. The DMCA only prohibits devices designed to circumvent "works protected under [Title 17, U.S.C.]" which does NOT include works first published before January 1, 1923. (Note that this doesn't apply to Metropolis specifically, but that's Sonny Bono's fault.) If Hollywood ever releases a pre-1923 movie on DVD with CSS encryption, that could be used as the loophole for a DeCSS clone that "allows you to view public domain content on CSS-encrypted DVDs. This program is not prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it is NOT intended to be used to decrypt content still under content."

He was killed by his own son over a thousand years before "Wi-Fi"

I never realised hom much ESR likes spoonerisms[?]> . Gill Bates of Sicromoft, Stichard Rallman, and so on.

this is why you PAY for an education

You're paying for the medium (textbooks) and support (professors).

this is why you PAY for software

When you buy a copy of Progeny (a version of Debian GNU/Linux), you're paying for the medium (CDs and books) and support.

newspapers, etc

You're paying for the medium (paper).

Yes, copyright is a government-granted monopoly. The United States Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8) recognizes copyright as existing "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Anything else is not constitutional. But somehow, the courts think that perpetual copyright[?] "promote[s] the progress of science and useful arts" and that because it's effectively limited to one day less than the lifetime of the Universe, it counts as "limited times."

this is why you PAY for an education

You're paying for the medium (textbooks) and support (professors).

this is why you PAY for software

When you buy a copy of Progeny (a version of Debian GNU/Linux), you're paying for the medium (CDs and books) and support.

newspapers, etc

You're paying for the medium (paper).

Yes, copyright is a government-granted monopoly. The United States Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8) recognizes copyright as existing "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Anything else is not constitutional. But somehow, the courts think that perpetual copyright[?] "promote[s] the progress of science and useful arts" and that because it's effectively limited to one day less than the lifetime of the Universe, it counts as "limited times."

Suck my cock, butterfingers!

WHAT??

You -can- do this. Right click on the link and choose "Save Target As."

What if the designer of the page has turned off right-click for that page? "Sorry, you're not allowed to right-click. However, this does not truly protect my copyright because anybody with wget can just go in and leech me."

And it's made by a bunch of sweaty chink-ohs!

Fucking go and fucking fuck your motherfucking mother, you fucking stupid coonfuck.

You're thinking of spirographography.

Eh.. i shouldn't do this, but.. What the hell.

While screwing up human-created radio patterns is an interesting effect, if the idea of listening to sound generated entirely by natural phenomena emitting radio waves interests you, there is a pretty good writing --> at this url <--, at the everything2 entry for "natural radio". The important thing about this site is that it contains a URL at the end containing recordings of the noise parsed by humans from natural radio. Turns out Mother Nature can create ambient about as evocative as anything we could ever replicate using our primitive tape recording systems..

If anyone else has some related links, btw, (and if y'all feel like it, we could maybe let this thread spiral way offtopic and maybe throw in a couple links regarding Oval, Pole, Farmers Manual or Disc or japanese noise groups, "Numbers Stations", etc..) could you post them as a reply to this?

In specific: The recent (excellent imho) issue of Wire with the cover story on nondeterministic music (or maybe it was the Urb where they interview richie hawtin.. can't remember. whatever.) They had a URL for some page at NASA in which they have sound files up containing natural radio emissions picked up by satellites *orbiting mars*.. with the source of the emissions being martian atmospheric phenomena. Freaky stuff, but it sounded really cool. unfortunately, i have lost that link. anyone have it?

They just want to bust all these kids under the DMCA!

• The circumvention must be unauthorized. If you have the authority to authorize something, and you encourage somebody to do it, it's no longer "unauthorized."
• The measure must protect a work covered under copyright. Vote counts are facts, which cannot be copyrighted. By the way, this has implications for anybody who wants to put silent movies published before 1923[?] on DVD with CSS, as a single CSS encrypted public domain title would be justification for "this software is designed to decrypt public domain DVD content; use as directed." It could also get Sklyarov off the hook if a significant number of classic (i.e. pre-1923) books are published in eBook form.

I take it as a given that the good Dr. Felten withdrew the initial paper because he could then show clear evidence of a chilling effect. Now, of course, the lawsuit proceeds apace, but Felten can of course present his paper without interference from the RIAA because it would further Felten's claims and provide even more clear evidence that the DMCA was, in fact, unconstitutional (not that any thinking person who doesn't accept big media's spin on things needs more clarification on the matter).

To continue to go after Felten would strengthen the case against the DMCA and, speed the day, the eventual dismantlement of this egregiously rotten piece of legislation.

Yay Felten et al. Thank goodness he's on our side.

1. Make sure your ventilation ducts are too small to crawl through.

Ineffective if your enemy is allied with the borrowers[?].

7. Make sure your main computers have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

I might suggest OpenBSD. It's a nice server for servers and firewalls because if you don't know the password, it's incompatible with everything.

10. No matter how many shorts you have in the system, treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

Bad idea because it would then open up a possible DoS: one of them will blow up the camera, which draws the guards away from the really valuable things.

12. Do not shoot at any of your co-workers if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.

Better yet, hire some competent engineers <plug>who graduated from Rose-Hulman</plug> to design your structures, over-engineering them for safety.

18. Pad any data file of crucial importance to 1.45MB.

Won't help if your can get access to Apache or WinApache. Won't help if you can use dd to split files (a DOS dd fits on a floppy). Won't help if you can get access to a CD burner, as a 4x CD burner can burn 1.5 MB in five seconds (not counting ToC and closing the session).

And what will Disney do with all three of them?

Disney will probably join with the rest of the MPAA and lobby for a constitutional amendment that removes what "limited times" are still left in copyright law after the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?].

Excess verbiage not only takes more time to type in, but more importantly, it opens more possibility for bugs.

So does barely readable "line-noise" such as sed code and uncommented Perl code. So does any code that doesn't have comments briefly describing what it does. Good code is largely self-documenting.

The goal is to write in the most abstract, most succinct possible way.

You mean like Mel[?]? You have to leave an opening for seq^H^H^Hrevisions to your code.

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Yes, I wish I had a great story to submit to slashdot so that I could play around with hyperlinks to everything2 .

Take all of the wires in the street, and all of the telco switch facilities and give them back to the people. Make the whole infrastructure of monopoly regulated telcos belong to the people who have paid for them. They are too valuable a resource to allow to remain in the hands of a few unscrupulous companies any longer. These companies were paid a GUARANTEED profit for decades. They actually made more money because they over-built their systems. Since we already paid for it, it is righfully ours.

A cool idea! I'm all for keeping government out of our lives, but, there are times when it's necessary. We own most of the roads, most of the water and sewage distribution and treatment facilities in the U.S., why not information distribution? Look at the Interstate highway System. That was a long-term project designed to enhance our infrastructure. This sounds pretty close, if not identical, to the digital information distribution troubles we're having now. A far-sighted approach to wider bandwidth distribution to the masses might be something that the government needs to get in on.

Obviously you can't compare to Canada, because they don't have the evil Verizon killing off the competition.

Verizon's favorite four-letter word

Really? The only info I could find about Orangejello or Lemonjello is an Everything2 node which calls the whole thing an "urban legend."

how future alien looking robots will be able to bring people back to life with dna but they will only live for one day "because of the space time continuum". What amatuerisness.

The amateurishness is on Spielberg's part. Hadn't he seen The 6th Day[?]? If I remember right, human memories could be stored in "syncordings" that could be backed up. If Hollywood is going to present a consistent view of the future, please don't fsck it up just to keep your hapless Pinocchio from feeling like a real boy for longer than 24 hours.

Yes, the ending you saw is the ending Kubrick wanted. But did Kubrick hand Spielberg that ending just to leave the door open for sequels, thinking audiences would "edit it out" as they were supposed to for Planet of the Apes?

No government has ever managed to regulate anything with absolute certainty. People speed all the time, despite the presence of Police on the streets. Banks, convenience stores, and houses are robbed daily. Tax fraud goes uncaught. Illegal drugs are trafficed in huge numbers. Murderers, rapists, and child abusers get away with it.

The only difference between breaking laws in "meatspace" (which, btw, I never hear anyone use except stupid authors like this guy) and breaking laws on the web is that it's a lot easier to spread the tools for breaking laws on the web than it is in the real world. And despite what some foolish authors may think, hardware protection can be and has been cracked (see: Playstation). And, like in the real world, the more people who feel that a law is unjust, the less success there will be in enforcing it (see: War on Drugs).

No government has ever managed to regulate anything with absolute certainty. People speed all the time, despite the presence of Police on the streets. Banks, convenience stores, and houses are robbed daily. Tax fraud goes uncaught. Illegal drugs are trafficed in huge numbers. Murderers, rapists, and child abusers get away with it.

The only difference between breaking laws in "meatspace" (which, btw, I never hear anyone use except stupid authors like this guy) and breaking laws on the web is that it's a lot easier to spread the tools for breaking laws on the web than it is in the real world. And despite what some foolish authors may think, hardware protection can be and has been cracked (see: Playstation). And, like in the real world, the more people who feel that a law is unjust, the less success there will be in enforcing it (see: War on Drugs).

take it to e2, where that kind of crap gets you a ching! and 10 karma. (sorry -- xp, "experience.").

Stupidity never felt so gross -- yet strangely compelling.