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Give Internet Explorer a little bit of Everything...

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Note that if you use one of several large ISPs like EarthLink, @Home, or NetZero, you already have new.net TLDs on a trial basis! I just gave it a try, and sure enough disney.xxx resolves on my box (Rogers @Home).

The existance of a rental market implies that there is some impediment to you making a copy of the thing you rented. If it is trivial to make the copy, then the rental market is likely to destroy the purchase market. Imagine for a moment that Blockbuster rented audio CD's for $1.00 a day or something. What do you think it would do to the market for CD's? It would probably completely destroy it.

Well, yes and no.

I don't know in your country, but in mine, libraries are allowed to lend books (of course) and audio/video material (CD, video tapes, etc.) In almost any significant city there are public libraries where you can borrow CDs free of charge. Yet that did not kill the market for music commerce. Every year, several records sell more than a million copies (in a potential market of 60 million people).

BTW, notice that I live in a country where IP rights are a fundamental right. Maybe that's a proof that strong IP protection (for authors, at least) is not absolutely incompatible with fair use.

Thomas Miconi

I don't really know anything else about Bono's career as a politician.

Six words: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

Despite that fact, I play any Nintendo games I want to on Nesticle.

NESticle's accuracy sucks Big Floppy Donkey Dick; it can't emulate games that rely on precise timing. Use TuxNES or one of the better WinDOS-based emulators instead. The only reason I ever touch NESticle is to make sure NES software I write displays a warning message if it is run on NESticle; it takes only four lines of NES asm to detect NESticle, and from there I display an advertisement for LoopyNES.

For some reason I just can't help but sing this to the tune of 'Ice Ice Baby.' I know that's horrible, but now I can't get it out of my head. Oh well.

Under standard copyright law, something like benchmarks is considered fair use, and is thus not subject to asinine click through agreements. If something is not covered by copyright law, it cannot reasonably be covered by click through

Click-through is like any other contract. Once you agree to it, you are bound by it. The agreements already waive your first sale rights. If you waive fair use, you waive fair use; such are the terms of the agreement. If you don't like it, tough beans. Use free software instead.

for anybody who actually cares, i just noticed that there's a related entry on everything2.com. apparently it's gibi, kibi, mebi, etc.

- j

The real, more subtle reason copyright terms are infinite is that bills keep getting passed to lengthen them.

For more information on perpetual copyright, read this writeup on Everything.

Here's how to get around perpetual copyrights and trademarks: Abstract the copyrighted expression away from the uncopyrightable idea by finding antecedents from before 1923 (or are otherwise Free). For example, derive Precious Moments from the Eloi people in chapter 4 of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine , and derive Noddy from Pinocchio renditions. This way you can avoid copyright and trademark infringement by taking a stereotype (uncopyrightable under Capcom v. Data East) and "making it yours" by changing just enough that the original expression is distinctive enough to overpower any copied expression.

This is why I no longer like Winnie-the-Pooh, as it has no Free antecedents.

No story that mentions Net encyclopaedias and such would be complete with a reference of Everything 2 in the comments to this story -- er, so here it is. Go there: it has articles on everything under the sun, admittedly of variable quality -- so help make it better.

A bit off subject, but I was caught off-guard by "AAN" (Apartment Area Network). A cool TLA, but I've never heard it used before. Did some quick digging and...

- Jargon File (aka: the "Hacker's Dictionary") contains no entry
- dictionary.com contains no entry
- www.everything2.com contains only, "Airport code for Al Ain, United Arab Emirates"

What is the moral of this story? I need to get a life and stop reading slashdot on Saturday nights. =>

It's basically same as the DVD regions, except only 3 - one for each of Japan, America, and Europe

This is for a good reason. Console software is optimized for a particular television hardware standard. European games are optimized for 50 fps PAL, while North American and Japanese games run on 60 fps NTSC (that is, until 2006 when the USian FCC kills NTSC). Games that don't conform to the television will fall out of sync and produce a scrambled picture. For example, take NES games. The NES is easy to mod-chip (simply cut the power line) but the more timing-sensitive games (especially Rare games such as Rad Racer that use Pole Position-style raster scrolling) crash when played on a different style of television.

This also has the side effect of making it possible to play burned copies of games.

Which may or may not be illegal, depending on the license the game is released under. Backup first, free software second, piracy last.

Is "One dollar == one vote" the future of American democracy?

No. It's the present. Otherwise, we wouldn't have laws such as the Bono Act and the DMCA.

What about the many thousands of parody tracks available? (e.g. "Lasagne", a take-off of "La Bamba")

"Lasagna" by Weird Al Yankovic appeared on the album "Even Worse" which is under Bono Act perpetual copyright. Most parodies came off either some comedy album, SNL, MADtv, Howard Stern, or the like and are copyrighted by their producers.

I'd say that Al Yankovic performed less than one-third of the songs attributed to him on Napster, but that's another node.

What about the many thousands of parody tracks available? (e.g. "Lasagne", a take-off of "La Bamba")

"Lasagna" by Weird Al Yankovic appeared on the album "Even Worse" which is under Bono Act perpetual copyright. Most parodies came off either some comedy album, SNL, MADtv, Howard Stern, or the like and are copyrighted by their producers.

I'd say that Al Yankovic performed less than one-third of the songs attributed to him on Napster, but that's another node.

The one issue is that Roy Orbison (The Big Bopper) passed away a long time ago

Which means his music won't come out of copyright until 71 years after such "long time ago." And the courts have upheld Congress's power to extend that by 20 years every 20 years.

IMO, if a build process is difficult or buggy, especially if it is an open source product that most people are expected to compile, then it reflects very badly on the quality of the code.

GNOME is designed for POSIX conforming systems with an X11 server. However, some systems that claim to conform don't in practice (such as AIX and Pains).

But IMO, there is NO EXCUSE for difficulty compiling a desktop.

Unless you're trying to compile it on a "weird" platform or a platform whose unit price is out of the typical consumer PC price range (that is, anything that's not built around a single PowerPC or x86).

IMO, if a build process is difficult or buggy, especially if it is an open source product that most people are expected to compile, then it reflects very badly on the quality of the code.

GNOME is designed for POSIX conforming systems with an X11 server. However, some systems that claim to conform don't in practice (such as AIX and Pains).

But IMO, there is NO EXCUSE for difficulty compiling a desktop.

Unless you're trying to compile it on a "weird" platform or a platform whose unit price is out of the typical consumer PC price range (that is, anything that's not built around a single PowerPC or x86).

The full text is Here on everything2, but for those you who don't like to click, I will exerpt the most important part:

Dr James Lovelock was first to articulate the reasons why Mars is barren. Put simply, let us look at the only example that we have of a world where life exists: Earth. How could we devise a subtle test to determine the existence of life on earth's surface? We don't need to; it sticks out a million miles away. Green continents. Atmospheric composition.

Life radiates to all available niches, it diversifies, it takes over, it envelops and transforms. Life doesn't just keep a foothold on a planet. If it is present at all, expect it to be almost everywhere on or near the surface. Expect entire geological phenomena such as coal and chalk to be caused by living things. Expect the planetary atmosphere to have puzzling components, like 21% highly reactive oxygen and traces of methane.

Sure, earthly life would have a tough time just keeping a foothold on Mars. But with Martian life, we would even expect like to not arise at all unless it did so in a form suitable to the prevalent conditions, and be further honed by hundreds of millions of years of adaptation.

It is likely that the concept of a planet having traces of life is not a valid one: there will be diversity and many filled niches, or nothing. Even if there are or were a few bacteria on mars, then it's not what we think of as life: there is no ecology, no biosphere, no diversity.

Looking for life on Mars is like the old story of the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost because there's more light there. We look for life on Mars because it's nearby, not because it is a good place to look.

What disturbs me is that no one is listining to the people. Revenue fell when people stopped clicking on ads, so the solution? Bigger ads! The rich people don't like using an invasive, obtrusive, feared product? Put it in Radio Shack where people finishing projects out of the Anarchist's Cookbook can go! B2B not working too well? Ignore the consumer demands! Go B2B! Yeah!

I slowly see the people who think they control the web, companies like Digital Convergence, slowly moving away from caring about, I dunno, the customer? and moving to what they want. For example, I was involved in a conference call for a $15,000 piece of software for the place where I work. Involved was myself (webmaster), my mangager, and our director. Not for some small company, but the sixth largest County Governemnt in the State of Florida. And right in the middle of the phone call, the guy demoing the product put us on hold with the following statement:

"I'm sorry, you'll have to hold on for a minute, I am being IRC'd."

WHAT?! IRC'd in the middle of a $15,000 demo? Yep, we'll be sure to use you! But that is my point, when are companies going to learn that we are not plugs, we are not hardware, we are individual human beings, who care how we are used, who care what we buy, who care who is snooping into out personal lives.

Ok, breathe in, breathe out, circular, like the merry-go-round, it goes up, and around. Whew. Just my 2 coppers if anyone cares.

What's KDE? What's Linux?

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3-state.

ps. "Linux", FYI, is a flavor of power known to the geniuses among us simply as Catharsis. You try spending seven hours of your night recompiling your kernel and tell me that doesn't get your mind off your ex. Go on. I dare ya'. I tell you, that CPU just hums smoother when it's running rock-hard code.

[1] is "kid" for "dude" solely a Bostonism? It sounds perfectly normal to me...

What's KDE? What's Linux?

-
3-state.

ps. "Linux", FYI, is a flavor of power known to the geniuses among us simply as Catharsis. You try spending seven hours of your night recompiling your kernel and tell me that doesn't get your mind off your ex. Go on. I dare ya'. I tell you, that CPU just hums smoother when it's running rock-hard code.

[1] is "kid" for "dude" solely a Bostonism? It sounds perfectly normal to me...

What's KDE? What's Linux?

-
3-state.

ps. "Linux", FYI, is a flavor of power known to the geniuses among us simply as Catharsis. You try spending seven hours of your night recompiling your kernel and tell me that doesn't get your mind off your ex. Go on. I dare ya'. I tell you, that CPU just hums smoother when it's running rock-hard code.

[1] is "kid" for "dude" solely a Bostonism? It sounds perfectly normal to me...

Remeber, the RIAA embodies total greed. They realize they can make more money off the idea if they destroy Napster as it is now, then innovate a new, pay-per-some-mundane-criteria-like-clicking scheme.

Perhaps you meant Blue Laws.

The NHS is not a socialised health care, it's a socialised life expectancy reducer :o)

Universal, socialised health care is rare, except in France (and in Scandinavia, of course). It seems to work well, provided you're ready to fund it decently - and the UK government is not.

The worst thing is, the average Brit wouldn't mind so much about paying a little more taxes and getting a reasonable cancer survival rate in return - but you know, ideology...

Thomas Miconi

However, there are many slaves of E2. Damn its evil silicon heart!

-j

However, there are many slaves of E2. Damn its evil silicon heart!

-j

Currently E2 is a fair mix of facts, rants, GTKY (Getting-To-Know-You) polls and inside jokes -- but thinking of it, it represents us much better than just plain facts. And those future generations wouldn't wanna read a dry encyclopedia either. Thus, a pile of dry facts can be as useless as a pile of GTKY polls.

Yeah, if you want to get points for posting to web sites, go to Everything and accumulate XP. I like the idea that Karma is finite in Slashdot, and it shouldn't matter--the moderation system is not designed for personal aggrandizement.

I want an embedded system. Literally. Embedded into my HEAD!

Something similar has been discussed already on Everything.

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Make that link to Godel's Theorem, EveryThing2

From Everything2:

CLEC: An acronym for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier which is a telephone company that is independent and challenging a monopoly and or mainstay carrier in the business of telecom service.

ILEC: Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier. Perhaps an RBOC, basically, well, the Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier.

From Everything2:

CLEC: An acronym for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier which is a telephone company that is independent and challenging a monopoly and or mainstay carrier in the business of telecom service.

ILEC: Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier. Perhaps an RBOC, basically, well, the Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier.

From Everything2:

CLEC: An acronym for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier which is a telephone company that is independent and challenging a monopoly and or mainstay carrier in the business of telecom service.

ILEC: Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier. Perhaps an RBOC, basically, well, the Incumbant Local Exchange Carrier.

Well, there was in fact at least one movie proclaiming itself to be compliant with Dogme '95 which I have seen - Festen.

Just keeping the record straight :)

Besides, even if total compliance is near-impossible, rules like this can serve as a useful guideline, or a point to aim for. They can steer you in the right direction.

/James.

Original animated gif from the game

Everything info

T-shirts

One of the best games I've ever played was a game from Infocom that I'm sure most of you have played, the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy. It was incredibly hard, but I managed to beat it- it had a built in hints system, which told you how to solve nearly every puzzle. IIRC, you got less points if you used the hints system, but it was very thorough, and if you wanted too you could just play through again and beat it without cheating. I never would have figured out the fluff puzzle without it... those of you who've played the game know what I'm talking about.

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One of the best games I've ever played was a game from Infocom that I'm sure most of you have played, the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy. It was incredibly hard, but I managed to beat it- it had a built in hints system, which told you how to solve nearly every puzzle. IIRC, you got less points if you used the hints system, but it was very thorough, and if you wanted too you could just play through again and beat it without cheating. I never would have figured out the fluff puzzle without it... those of you who've played the game know what I'm talking about.

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For everything you might want to know about AYBABTO, follow this link:
link

Everything is a great site. I node on occasion. But that's one site. The web has room for that, plus a universe of other types of content. Everything can be very satisfying, but it just doesn't do the trick sometimes. My main problem is that it's too self-referential. Surfing the web in "Lynx mode" is tunnel vision.

Everything is a great site. I node on occasion. But that's one site. The web has room for that, plus a universe of other types of content. Everything can be very satisfying, but it just doesn't do the trick sometimes. My main problem is that it's too self-referential. Surfing the web in "Lynx mode" is tunnel vision.

You have to use .SWFs or .SVGs to show animation. Don't watch the cartoons, eh?

On wb.com or disney.com, if they use Flash to show animated content, that's OK because I surfed in explicitly to view animated content. But if Flash is used for navigation or advertising (shock the monkey anyone?), it gets annoying real fast.

Sometimes content must be updated without reloading, many applications require real time data streaming.

Granted. But I've also seen Java used to annoy and advertise (shock the monkey anyone?). Even then, stock tickers can be done with an autorefreshing <iframe>.

Point: Don't annoy. Oh, and to your other comment:

The web is more than a World Wide Reference Section.

Have you looked at the parallel web that is Everything? It's a bulletin board that has both factual content and humor, and it's all text (except the ASCII art).

But I don't see what the problem here really is at the top end: just generate your pages from a database and stick the content into a template for the browser/platform in question. What's the big deal?

I know of a good system to do this: the Everything engine (which powers the world's largest online encyclopedia). But what about people whose content is hosted on Freeservers, GeoCities, and XOOM, hosts whose security policies do not permit server-side dynamic page generation?

Even worse, if I want to be the 500th person to make their own recording of "Yesterday" by McCartney and distribute it via Napster I guess I'm screwed too.

Except this time it's by the publishers not the labels. Composers' and performers' rights organizations such as ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI in the US (along with a host of organizations in other countries) control cover rights, as a cover can be considered a "derivative work" and/or a "public performance" of a copyrighted work, and there is no longer a public domain to speak of.

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Windows XP will itself destroy protected audio and video files that do not "authenticate" with the sound and/or video cards.

It doesn't delete them; it simply refuses to play them through any driver that isn't signed by Microsoft. To be signed, the driver must disable all digital outputs (such as waveOut to waveIn (What-U-Hear), writing to file, and connectors on the card) when the Secure Audio Path is open.

I never did upgrade to 2000

Lucky you. My box came bundled with Windows ME.

Here's a standard mirror of the beast, since (as posted earlier), the site has a limit of 60 anonymous connections, and I didn't notice any mirror that wasn't FreeNet based.

HTTP: http://www.bluecherry.net/~rain/shasm.tgz
FTP: ftp://ftp.bluecherry.net/pub/misc/shasm.tgz


Our FTP server has a limit of 15 anonymous users, so I'd highly recommend using the HTTP mirror unless some BOFH firewalled port 80 outbound. (I've seen it happen!).

--
Ben Winslow..........rain@bluecherry.net
bluecherry internet..http://www.bluecherry.net/

Here's a standard mirror of the beast, since (as posted earlier), the site has a limit of 60 anonymous connections, and I didn't notice any mirror that wasn't FreeNet based.

HTTP: http://www.bluecherry.net/~rain/shasm.tgz
FTP: ftp://ftp.bluecherry.net/pub/misc/shasm.tgz


Our FTP server has a limit of 15 anonymous users, so I'd highly recommend using the HTTP mirror unless some BOFH firewalled port 80 outbound. (I've seen it happen!).

--
Ben Winslow..........rain@bluecherry.net
bluecherry internet..http://www.bluecherry.net/