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Reminds me of Prime Intellect.

(I'm not young any more).

That link will give the mods a little computer history if they're interested.

Unfortunately the "history" is, as so often, written entirely from the US point of view.

ENIAC was *not* the world's first electronic digital computer, that was Colossus, built by the British Post Office Research Unit and designed by Tom Flowers. It was completed in December 1943 and went into service (i.e., unlike ENIAC, it was actually ready before the war ended) in February 1944.

The world's first electronic, digital *stored program" computer was the Manchester (UK) BABY, which ran its first program in June 1948.

The world's first production dspc was the EDSAC, built at Cambridge University by Maurice ("Mr.Microcode") Wilkes; it ran its first program in March 1949.

The US did no better than get the world's third dspc.

The world's 4th dspc, BTW, was built in Australia.

It's called the "Not Invented Here Syndrome" people.

It appears that the moderators don't know any history. You're obviously making a joke based on the observation in the early 1950s that "the worldwide market for computers is about ten." It's funny now, but then computers weren't very useful for anybody without huge number crunching and database needs and multi-million dollar budgets. At the time, a computer took an entire building to house, and a whole lot of personnel to operate. The most powerful computer in existance was less powerful than a singing Hallmark card.

So the joke's on the mods, who actualy believe it. Of course, right now the worldwide market is zero, since they haven't actually constructed one yet. If and when they accomplish the feat, it's possible that in the future all compuers will be quantum computers. I doubt I'll live long enough to see it (I'm not young any more).

That link will give the mods a little computer history if they're interested.

As far as I know, all proper studies on "psychic ability"

I have made a proper study of people with enhanced perceptive abilities, and I know they can do things that most people cannot. But that's just an anecdote, and you don't care about that because it's not a controlled study done by James Randi himself.

To answer the questions at the start of your post, see Ingo Swann's books, Secrets of Power, Volume I and II. Maybe you can find them on the torrents... Or you can listen to the Art Bell interview. (should be a few downloads left...) Swann says he only ever worked with scientists, and (usually) does not demonstrate his abilities publicly.

running "strings" on windows ftp.exe and finding the BSD copyright has nothing to do with "the network stack".

The best citation I could find for this was here.

Fuck Natalee Holloway.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/7/3/491/18474

Yes. In fact, if you watched the worldcup on ESPN online you were watching the stream coming from a local server hosted by your ISP.

Although, to be pedantic, not all CDNs host in every ISP's datacenter... only the really rich ones do. Everyone else just uses anycast to reduce latency. A good write up about anycast is here

Where should we long time Slashdotters go then?

Pay Rusty a visit at www.kuro5hin.org. Then you'll really pine for the old days.

I'm not sure I see what you mean ...

"Pissing in the shower (3.00 / 3) (#23)
by rusty on Fri May 28, 2010 at 03:41:16 PM EST

...is environmentally responsible. You use gallons less water than if you showered and pissed separately.

Showering in piss alone would be even better. "

Everybody thinks they deserve to go to college. Everybody thinks that because they have a degree, they can command six figures.

Yes, but you have to put the reason why this is so in context.

Before WWII, only rich people could afford to send their children to college. They did this so their children would always have a leg up on the proletariat. If two people apply for a job, usually the one with the extra piece of paper will get it, right?

After WWII, congress passed the GI Bill to keep soldiers from getting restless. This bill made college affordable for many more people. The explosion of college costs can be pretty directly tied to the subsidization of college by the government.

This connection was made in a book I found at a thrift shop: The Screwing of the Average Man.

Publishers, whether it be of music, books, etc, all seem to have this idea that they are entitled to more of the profits than the people who actually _created_ the work.

Now, in the case of physical items, such as printed books, etc, there is the issue of mass producing it, distribution, deals with resellers, etc, etc. I can see where merely _creating_ the original can potentially pale in comparison to the work it takes to actually make/move/sell the item.

I've had a lot of people request that I publish The Paxil Diaries in book form, and at least one slashdotter wants a signed copy (which I will be happy to provide). Can anybody here clue me in as to the best way to go about doing that? I have it in PDF form ready to print.

And the Send-the-Enterprise guy will be arriving in 3... 2... 1...

That's actually Google's top result for me on the query send the enterprise! Not bad, not bad at all.

Because it worked so well when K5 did it

Surprisingly, it didn't turn out to have any impact on anything, that I can tell.

Jees, you kids today. My first computer was a slide rule! ENIAC was patented about five years before I was born. I didn't grow up with computers, computers grew up with me.

Should I invoke GOML? Now surely someone even more geezerly than me will chime in...

Have you managed to slashdot your own site?

Apparently... I suspected that this would happen. I'm hosting on a small vps that I've been playing with for a year. I recently asked my host to increase the memory, but I haven't heard back from him yet. You can read the same proposal at the kuro5hin.org link - you just won't get the three small pictures. :)

I am of the opinion that the best way to clean up the Gulf of Mexico is to Send the Enterprise (no, not that Enterprise, silly rabbits!). The complete proposal is given at the link.

Tell everyone you know.

(kuro5hin.org has two options for voting for a story: "Front Page" and "Section Page". 93% of the people who voted for my story voted FP, so I have reason to believe that my proposal has merit.)

Well, computers HAVE dumbed down the public. When I was young and computers took entire buildings to house, people knew the difference between their, there, and they're. Now that we have the internet and spell checkers, nobody knows how to spell or use an apostrophe correctly. We used to not have calculators, and did all our math with pencil and paper (some of us used slide rules). A lot of folks growing up with calculators and computers couldn't compute without them. Cash registers didn't use to tell you how much change you got back, and the cashier actually had to count the change back. Today's cashiers can't; back then some cash cashiers had to figure out sales tax in their heads.

Computers are indeed dumbing down the public. But this wouldn't be; all it would do would be to make the picture of which way the battery goes in unnecessary.

What are you talking about?

I can only guess you're thinking of the TCP/IP stack, which is a myth that was long ago been disproved.

The "GPL being free for users" statements makes you look like an ideological kook. Users don't give a shit about the license of the source code for the apps they use.

Why lie?

You might find this informative

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/6/19/05641/7357

Not that I'm aware of, but you can buy hookworm to treat your asthma or other autoimmune disorders. Costs a few grand, or you can always get it from the source.

Maybe reasonable would be 7 years, or two.

Two is definitely too short; even seven years would put The Paxil Diaries into the public domain, and I'm just getting them into book form (it's close now, guys). Two is way too short. But even twenty is reasonable; that's how long a patent lasts.

The journal Dork Side of the Moon (February 25 2008) might stand on its own without the beginning and ending Pink Floyd lyrics, but it wouldn't be nearly as good. That album was recorded over 35 years ago, yet the journal that sort of relies on it is actually breaking copyright.

The Economist is right; long copyright terms hinder creativity. Artistic advances are like scientific and technological advances, as all draw on one's culture and what has come before. Were patents as long as copyrights, technological advance would come to a virtual standstill.

I thought Microsoft said it would fully 100% support free and open source software including games.

Thank you for proving that you are jerks once again Microsoft by stopping this free Mechwarrior 4 release. It could have been good public relations and got you more business. Now we FOSS developers are going to have to speak against you for some bad public relations and hurt your sales and business and reputation.

Only Microsoft can beat Microsoft in this way and put themselves out of business by 2017, indeed!

From the /. story headline (emphasis added):

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Uses Games To See the Future

Having read the fine links, it seems Mr. de Mesquita doesn't actually "see the future". He gathers data and throws it into his computer, which applies game rules to determine the most likely outcome. To me, "seeing the future" implies predicting the unpredictable - assasinations, a meteor taking out a major area, the abdication of a king (so he could marry his American sweetheart), etc.

Indeed, here's a quote from the New Scientist article:

According to political scientist Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, this is the real strength of the approach. "I suspect the model's success is largely due to the fact that Bueno de Mesquita is very good on the input side; he's a very knowledgeable person and a widely respected political scientist. I'm sceptical that the modelling apparatus adds as much predictive power as he says it does."

Methinks Mr. de Mesquita's method works because he meticulously gathers excellent data. If his data was sloppy, his rate of successful "predictions" would be much lower than it is.

Sometimes events which are 'unpredictable' happen. In retrospect we say, 'oh yes, this event was the only logical event to have taken place'. But such an event is typically unthinkable before it happens. Mr. deMesquita's model doesn't allow for the unpredictable, and is therefore NOT 'future seeing'.

I have a book on seeing the future. Here's a quote from the first couple pages that I typed up for a 2008 election prediction poll on K5 a while back:

Your Nostradamus Factor, by Ingo Swann

Chapter 1: Jumping The Time Barrier

Like many others, I've had good reasons during my life to assume that the future can be seen. But if I had any doubt it would have vanished as a result of an astonishing forty-five seconds when I found myself in Detmold, then in West Germany, in the spring of 1988.

Detmold is near the beautiful Teutoburger Forest and a famous pre-Christian shrine, Horn-Externstein, which is a pile of towering rocks riddled with sonorous caves. Until the time of Charlemagne it is said that Nordic kings came to Horn-Externstein to consult seers about the future.

I was invited to Detmold by Herr Manfred Himmel in April 19988 to give a series of lectures about psi research. This was Herr Himmel's fifth "esoteric" conference, and it was well attended by several hundred people. Herr Himmel was ardent about psychic matters, and the talks of his other speakers were interesting to me. Some of these speakers were also practicing psychics who were busy giving individual "readings" and making predictions about the future.

I was billed as the famous American superpsychic who had "astonished scientists" since my first formal laboratory experiments in 1970. But I have never given individual "readings," and I never made predictions about the future.

Many of Herr Himmel's conference attendees were visibly disappointed that I did not give the expected readings and did not foresee the future. Although I had studied "prophecy" and predicting for many years and had even experienced some novel insights about it, I was well aware that most predictions turn out to be wrong. I felt I had a scientific reputation to protect, which would be damaged if I accumulated a list of erroneous predictions. Moreover, I didn't view myself as a future-seer in any professional sense, and I though that predicting should be left to those who were or at least tried to be.

I gave several lectures and workshops at the conference, as well as the keynote address. I had worked hard at preparing this address, entitling it "Revising Psychic Research Methods and Expectations in the New Age," and even gave the opening statements in German before continuing

It's not just games, when you buy win 7 home premium that disk contains all the "content" of win 7 ultimate.

Correct, when you buy the Windows HOME EDITION BOX, you get the home edition. When you buy the Windows Ultimate edition box, you get the Ultimate edition. There is no false advertising. IT SAYS ON THE BOX WHAT YOU GET. The specifiably states that you do not have access to everything. That is not the case here. This is in every way contradictory to the consumer expectations of purchase. This is all covered under consumer protection and fraud laws.

Next you get to the issue of first sale doctrine verses licensing. Right now in the US most Federal Circuit courts have standing precedents that a shrink wrapped software box is a sale of the package and NOT a sale of a license. If this is true in your given jurisdiction, then when you purchase a product (including this game) you are purchase the right to use that software regardless of the EULA (your right to use happens at purchase, NOT at the "I agree" button on the EULA). This would include anything on the disc, be it Windows 7 Ultimate or Bio Shock 2 DLC. It is after all on your disc, which you own, and have a right to use it. (That is not to say you have a right to reproduction which is what copyrights are all about.)

To summarize, I think this is BS for two reasons.

1) It is unethical to advertise a product as complete but that contains portions that you are unaware you can not use.

2) If I have a disc that I have purchased from the creator, I should be able to do what ever I want (for personal use). This includes using any portion of code or software on the disc without further payment. (This was entirely legal until the DMCA by the way.)

To also state I am talking about non-commercial use. Commercial use already has its own set of requirements that seem adequate. But the recent attempts by many companies to circumvent the historic meaning and use of copyright law is absurd. The law was never meant to go after non-commercial users, it was to prevent commercial exploitation by third parties. At no point did anyone drafting legislation until the 30's-40's (more than a century after enactment) even consider it in the ball park that someone should be prosecuted for anything related to home use.

I would suggest this nifty article with some bits of commentary from Presidents Jefferson and Madison:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/23/23214/3438

In the case of Apple, I would hope to use their own 'lovely, mature' OS they wrote from scratch in 1984 to power their original machines, like Microsoft. Not drop all of their own work and use someone else's 17 years later. Think of the uproar if Microsoft did this.

Microsoft DOES also do this. Take a look at this article:

Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author."

Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.

However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as "Berkeley" on the East Coast and "California" on the West Coast...and "Berkeley" is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).

Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.

Microsoft doesn't advertise it but they have freely used BSD code in the past. They did NOT write all of their own code from scratch. In the end it really doesn't matter who wrote the code, so long as it's being used properly according to the license. The BSD code is released under and open license that allows you to do just about anything you want with it so there's very little trouble there.

Spider isn't Microsoft's flagship product being sold to consumers. Spider is a (if I'm reading the article correctly) is to handle TCP/IP stacks, not run the entire core. You could remove Spider from Windows and it would still function (sans TCP/IP, but would in all effects still run.) Same can't be said for OSX and BSD/Mach Kernel. A part isn't comparable to a whole product

In the case of Apple, I would hope to use their own 'lovely, mature' OS they wrote from scratch in 1984 to power their original machines, like Microsoft. Not drop all of their own work and use someone else's 17 years later. Think of the uproar if Microsoft did this.

Microsoft DOES also do this. Take a look at this article:

Now, some of Spider's code (possibly all of it) was based on the TCP/IP stack in the BSD flavors of Unix. These are open source, but distributed under the BSD license, not the GPL that Linux is released under. Whereas the GPL states that any software derived from GPL'ed software must also be released under the GPL, the BSD license basically says, "here's the source, you can do whatever you want, just give credit to the original author."

Eventually the new, from scratch TCP/IP stack was done and shipped with NT 3.5 (the second version, despite the number) in late 1994. The same stack was also included with Windows 95.

However, it looks like some of those Unix utilities were never rewritten. If you look at the executables, you can still see the copyright notice from the regents of the University of California (BSD is short for Berkeley Software Distrubution, Berkeley being a branch of the University of California, for some reason referred to as "Berkeley" on the East Coast and "California" on the West Coast...and "Berkeley" is one of those words that starts to look real funny if you stare at it too long - but I digress).

Keep in mind there is no reason to rewrite that code. If your ftp client works fine (no comments from the peanut gallery!) then why change it? Microsoft has other fish to fry. And the software was licensed perfectly legally, since the inclusion of the copyright notice satisfied the BSD license.

Microsoft doesn't advertise it but they have freely used BSD code in the past. They did NOT write all of their own code from scratch. In the end it really doesn't matter who wrote the code, so long as it's being used properly according to the license. The BSD code is released under and open license that allows you to do just about anything you want with it so there's very little trouble there.

File away with 8-track, betamax and video disks

Eight tracks don't belong in your list. They were in everybody's cars (except mine, I used cassettes) and most houses for over ten years. And they weren't technically superior, even though they had twice the transport speed of cassette. They had to switch tracks four times per album, and often this would have songs cut off in the middle. The tapes were bulky and unwieldy, and if a tape got "eaten" it was harder to repair than a casette.

People finally realized that they were inferior and they were superceded by cassettes, which were originally developed for dictation. You can file eight tracks with 78 rpm shellack records, black and white CRT TVs, automotive carburators, and steam locomotives, not Betamax or video disks.

They were included in a humorous K5 article I wrote back in 2005, Good Riddance to Bad Tech (which is a bit out of date; today's shoelaces are superior, and they've brought back volume knobs in car radios).

Blah blah blah racism blah blah.

At some point in the future, all humans will be the same race : mixed-up human, with racial features characteristics appearing as per standard rules.

For the rest : go read http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296

A long time ago, some of the people behind Slashdot created Everything2, one of the first massively collaborative writing projects. Some people like myself used to write encyclopedic articles on E2, but they kind of trailed off as Wikipedia picked up steam following this Kuro5hin article, leaving people who wrote more subjective, opinionated articles and even fiction. Should Wikipedia disappear, would people flock back to E2?

The problem with giving to Wikimedia is that they have been so wasteful of the money they've been given. The move to the Bay Area is chief exhibit #1 - why move an organization whose whole purpose, mission, and asset is a web page to one of the most expensive real estate locations on earth?

I'm not the only one who thinks Wikimedia has more than enough money.

Yeah, and you geezers were too short sighted and cheap to carry your date values in more than one byte, and the Y1K problem wiped out your civilization! Way to go, grandpa.

Wait a sec...

Isn't how things started in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect got started off?

*fear*

I get all the free RIAA downloads I need from the radio! Just like I used to tape the radio, now I sample it. The only internet downloads I need now are indie music, and they WANT me to download their stuff.

If the RIAA didn't have radio they'd be tickled pink to have you smple their wares from the internet, too. Their true enemy isn't "piracy", it's legitimate competetion from the independant artists, who have discovered that the majors are no longer needed for anything except getting your work on the radio.

If you're in St Louis, KSHE plays seven albums every Sunday night, uncut and uninterrupted and have been doing so for decades. I had Ted Nugent's Stranglehold album on cassette a full week before it went on sale, thanks to KSHE.

This new format does solve one interesting problem -- how to extend the patent on MP3, which is set to expire soon. Too bad copyrights aren't as short a length as patents, and a good thing patents don't last as long as copyrights. If they did, technological progress would be as slow as artistic progress is today. Like science and technology, art draws on what has come before.

It doesn't apply in my garage or in my car. In fact, none of the bill of rights has any meaning left.

Ich Bindawalross (London) - GNAA (NYSE: GNAA) President timecop released a statement today regarding the immediate Internet release of MacOS X for the x86 architecture, available on many BitTorrent networks. After making the statement, timecop yielded the stage to a second speaker at the press conference, Apple Computer co-Founder and CEO, Steve "Rim" Jobs, now fully recovered from his recent gender reassignment surgery to field questions from attending press members.

"We here at Apple Computerth [sic] have decided on a slightly different path for the upcoming version of the MacOS X," Jobs states before bursting out into high pitched giggles. "We have replaced our overpriced and bloated software with an efficient and easy-to-use interface. I would like to take this opportunity to announce a merger larger than a Zimbabwe nigger cock: GNAA and Apple Computer."

Returning to the podium, timecop began speaking again, while Steve Jobs submitted to orally pleasuring his ten inch nigger cock. "Dedicated faggots have been loyally purchasing the homosexual software and hardware abomination that is Macintosh computers. Apple has been striving to provide software customers with the most flambouyantly homosexual combination available. However, in recent days, this hasn't been enough.

"There has been increasing pressure from the disgustingly obese Lunix nerds and the socially well-adjusted and popular Windows users to convert, as well as pressure from OS X emulators to provide consumers with increasingly gay products. Apple Computer has decided to merge with GNAA in order to broaden the appeal and better serve the interests of all those who buy Macintosh products. Furthermore, we will adopt Apple's "Step 2 ???? PROFIT!" marketing model. This will also stop Apple from going out of business, which they probably would have otherwise."

At this point, timecop paused and deposited a quart of Gaynigger seed into Steve Jobs' mouth.

"GNAApple is committed to our new OS X86. Rather than give the user the difficulty of finding pornography themselves, we provide them with the classic hello.jpg, redundantly archived and brand labeled throughout the 950 MB DVD image, as well as a bundled copy of GPA (Gay Porn Avalanche). Now, greater efficiency in masturbatory pursuits can be provided to all."

"As Slashdot users, many of you might have been exposed to the pirated release, and information pertaining to it. We would like to thank Rob "CmdrCocko" Malda for running the first article, leading to the release of information about our upcoming merger. We would also like to extend our gratitude to thepiratebay.org and XiSO for helping us spread the release over the 'underground scene.' We thank you, the IRC channels who put it on their hacked .edu xdcc bots and fserves who hosted it on your dialup connections.

Steve Jobs, recovering from the large dosage of AIDS from the variety of syphilitic, festering sores of GNAA members, rose to his feet at this point during the press conference. "Our previous versions of OS X were released prematurely, and as a result the operating system was unstable and fragile. Our team of software engineers have also decided to abandon the weak and inefficient UNIX backside in favor of a more efficient and robust alternative: WinNT. The pirated version of our new operating system has had record acclaim from users of the Jewish-based internet news organization known as "Slashdot".

"Those doubting the superiority of our new release need only read user testimonials."

"The Torrent going around as: Mac OS X Tiger X86 READNFO-XISO It's a complete fake. When the image is booted it shows a picture of a guy showing off his Bu** H**e." - Anon Coward

"if you unrar, burn, and boot like the .nfo file says, it just boots it to a very lovely goatse image. no joke, wasted two hours of my life and

Yeah, dKos is running a fairly heavily modified fork of scoop, originally created for kuro5hin. It was intended from the start as a better slashcode, and generally speaking it is, but the search functions have never been great.

DNFTT!!

Selling media in any particular form is always going to be superseded, but the music industry itself, getting popular music to the populace, has done nothing but grow. The sheet music industry was the music industry. Now it's not.

I don't think it's possible to intelligently discuss copyright and distribution issues without addressing everything in Macauley on Copyright. I think anyone who's going to tl;dr that should stfu. Because I think he saw, 168 years ago, every relevant facet of the problem we're facing today. There's a payload quote in there, but I refuse to quote it. Context matters, and I'm tired of unconsidered repetition of talking points.

I argued several years ago that the bill of rights is dead

I will have to go back and read that one, can not right now, but I saved it for future reference, also noted that there some good comments associated with it.

I hope you are wrong, that the bill of rights is not complete dead and also hope that it can be revived along with education about the Constitution as I strongly believe that all the corporate abuses, including Copyright, can be stopped, prevented and reversed if companies are treated as companies and not people.

It goes beyond the fact that a person lives and dies, even that person can pass the copyright to his children/family/Heirs in a couple of legal forms. Thus the copyright is still being enforced by people directly related to the copyright holder. I am definitely for that, but only the length of the copyright as set originally, not how it has been abused and extended.

Its absurd that copyrights get extended again and again, beyond the legal limits originally intended.

If corporations have the same rights of a person, person-hood, they will enforce the copyrights theoretically forever, definitely not what was intended by Copyright law. And not what I would want to see either.

If companies get more person-hood rights it will only get worse, not better. I sincerely hope the Supreme Court Decision that granted some person-hood rights will be overturned, they have more financial incentive to wreck havoc on current system, including copyright laws.

Now person-hood for corporations extends into many other areas besides copyright, but that alone does not make it off topic with respects to copyright law, as it applies there as well.

I see treating people as people and companies as companies with a clear separation (same with religion for the sake of freedom to worship, but that is off topic) as a first necessary step to remove much of the money (ie corporate lobbyists, very few are not backed by corporations...) out of politics. With the amount of money corporations have and their financial incentive to extend the years material remains in a copyright status, well the system is ripe for abuse.

As to the person who mentioned that it would not be any different if one company gave millions to a politician vs a single multi-millionaire giving that politician/political party millions of dollars (without regards to the legality of how much a single person can give) is most certainly very different as they can not hide in the shadows behind the constructs of a corporation. I would suggest that there are some very rich individuals that are so polarizing because of their views that politicians would think twice about taking their money for fear of losing their office. Sure they are greedy and want the money, however they still have to get votes to get/maintain their office.

The ability of a company to gain any person-hood rights most definitely impacts Copyrights and Copyright laws in a negative manner.

I have read many of the posts in this discussion, and I thought I would weigh in.

First of all, as I went through creating the list of expiring copyrights, I noticed that as I got farther back in time the copyrights that expired were less interesting to me. For example the 28 year old ones are closing in on being able to legally start emulating most games of the older consoles. By the time we get into 1934, I had trouble finding ones that I cared about.

For the questions as to why shouldn't we just write new stories and software etc? I do agree with that up to a point, and I have certainly written quite a few things that public domain or permissively licensed. But, first of all, the economically efficient price for information is its marginal cost, or zero. Second of all, if you care about stories and software being created, it is often easier to start from an existing work, and make improvements. For example, "What Child is This" uses the tune of Greensleeves. Or Shakespeare using existing plays, but improving them. Human time is precious, and if you can use less by 'stealing' that helps society. Why reinvent the wheel? In short, economically, copyright should last long enough to compensate the creator, and then it should be freed. (I have written about this before, but I know more now than I knew then: http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/1/8/122920/9442 )

As for the people who think that no body follows copyright anymore, so why do we care? There is some truth to that, but things that are legal are much easier to do. For example, it is legal to download freeciv, but not starcraft. I'll let you guess which is easier to do.

Now, on to kdawson's question about the odds that Congress lets 1923 works expire in 2018. I think there is a fair chance that the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension in 1998 was the last major copyright extension that occurs in the US. Why? Because more and more people are realizing that the public domain matters and is useful. In 1976, people stated with a straight face that if it wasn't available commercially, it wasn't available. So in 1976 it could be argued that keeping it in copyright kept it available to the public. In 1998, there was protest by a few people such as Michael Hart, founder of the Project Gutenberg. In 2009 places like Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Google Books prove that public domain content is more accessible. Plus you have people like the pirate party calling for 5 year copyright ( http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english ). So I think there will be a serious fight to stop any further copyright extension. I wrote this slashdot story to try and get the message out that copyright is not what it used to be.

Everything we need to fix problems with corporations are in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution

I argued several years ago that the bill of rights is dead.

We're all going to die one day. Whether it is by cancer, car accident, or natural causes I don't care.

There's more to dying than just death. Cancer is a horrible way to go. OTOH my ex-mother in law just stopped in mid sentence of heart failure. Not a bad way to go at all.

I'm not afraid of death, but I hate pain. I woudn't want to die in a car wreck again, either. That hurts like hell, and due to the time dialation a few seconds isn't just a long time, it's the rest of your life.

I want to be shot by a jealous lover, on the upstroke, at age 105!

The ability to abuse the system, when you can't uniquely identify people. (The sock-puppet dilemma.)

I wrote a long essay on this subject over at another (essentially failed) competitor to Slashdot.

I can't believe you repurposed content from my diary on kuro5hin about sybil attacks in order to karma whore yourself out on Slashdot. For shame!

You wrote that here in 2004: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152. ... the current release of Zep's "Presence" is digitally mastered

Yes, from the analog source. There wasn't any digital recording when Zeppelin was out, digital didn't start until the very late 1970s.

Someone else mentioned that Nirvana was digitally mastered; I'm not always correct. I didn't have an analog copy of that album, but the statement was illustrational -- an analog product from a digital master will be inferior to a digital product from a digital master. You still get the advantages of theither and the disadvantages of both.

If you get ANY LP demonstrating better bass than the corresponding CD, you have a CD made by someone who didn't have a frickin' clue about mastering audio for a CD.

I wouldn't argue with that. Bass should be a CD's strong point; the deeper the tone, the less aliasing there is.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152

"They don't understand vinyl, either. Led Zeppelin's Presence album sounds far better than the equivalent CD; it has more, well, presence. It has sharper highs and deeper lows than the CD version (that is, if you have a good turntable). But the CD of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit will sound better than the vinyl. Zeppelin was mastered in analog, Nirvana was mastered in digital. If you make an analog recording from a digital source, or a digital recording for an analog source, you get the worst aspects of both mediums and the advantages of neither."

You wrote that here in 2004: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152. ... the current release of Zep's "Presence" is digitally mastered... I can't locate any info on the original CD... I had this on LP, before CDs caught on. But it's ridiculous anyway... and "Nevermind" was certainly digitally mastered for the CD. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is one song from "Nevermind", not the whole album... the title does come from that song, the last verse "I find it hard, it's hard to find. Oh well, whatever, nevermind". It was recorded (Butch Vig) and mixed (by Andy Wallace) in analog, and mastered (by Howie Weinberg) separately for LP, CD, and cassette. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab released a custom analog remix of Nevermind on vinyl as part of its ANADISQ 200 series in 1996.

There's a misunderstanding about the concept of "mastering". A recording engineer, the band, whomever, create a final mix, on digital or analog, it doesn't really matter. That's the copy that they submit as the "final" edition of the work. This then goes to a mastering engineer, who prepares it for the specific medium in use. This is true for any recorded medium, whether analog or digital, audio or video, and includes very subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle EQ and other "sweeting" of the work for that particular medium. In the case of making an LP, for example, the mastering engineer also applies the RIAA companding used on all LPs. This is a full curve of cuts and boosts, but specifically, lows are cut by 20dB, and highs are boosted by 20dB, during the mastering process. This allows a full 22 minutes of audio to fit per LP side... full bass would produce gigantic groves, lowering the time considerable, and also causing most tone arms to be sent skating across the disc. As well, highs are boosted by 20dB, to eliminate (on playback, when the 20dB cut is applied) much of the terrible high frequency hiss you pick up at high frequencies on an LP (this is the same basic principle used on Dolby noise reduction used on tape).

Completely different things are done taking a final digital mix (probably at 24/32-bit at 96/192kHz sampling these days) and producing a CD master: different EQ, downsampling with dithering and noise shaping, etc. Now technically, you could do most of the CD master in analog... and there are plenty of recording and mastering engineers who still use analog gear in the process, going from digital, though analog EQ or other gear, then back to digital... that's actually more of a point of controversy between engineers these days than the use of non-linear digital for recording and storage. The point is, you're still mastering FOR the CD, not simply taking an existing master for another medium onto that CD. And similarly, no one would take a CD master and just drop that on LP, either... they create a new master from the original final mix.

So yeah, if you did take an analog master, made for an LP or even cassette, just digitize it, and stamp it on a CD, it's going to sound poor. And this was done, sometimes by supposed "accident", other times just to get stuff out for the CD "gold rush".... but [hopefully] not in recent times. And many of those early fails have been digital remastered for CD (occasionally even for the better formats, SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-Ray), and

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152

"They don't understand vinyl, either. Led Zeppelin's Presence album sounds far better than the equivalent CD; it has more, well, presence. It has sharper highs and deeper lows than the CD version (that is, if you have a good turntable). But the CD of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit will sound better than the vinyl. Zeppelin was mastered in analog, Nirvana was mastered in digital. If you make an analog recording from a digital source, or a digital recording for an analog source, you get the worst aspects of both mediums and the advantages of neither."

You wrote that here in 2004: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152. ... the current release of Zep's "Presence" is digitally mastered... I can't locate any info on the original CD... I had this on LP, before CDs caught on. But it's ridiculous anyway... and "Nevermind" was certainly digitally mastered for the CD. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is one song from "Nevermind", not the whole album... the title does come from that song, the last verse "I find it hard, it's hard to find. Oh well, whatever, nevermind". It was recorded (Butch Vig) and mixed (by Andy Wallace) in analog, and mastered (by Howie Weinberg) separately for LP, CD, and cassette. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab released a custom analog remix of Nevermind on vinyl as part of its ANADISQ 200 series in 1996.

There's a misunderstanding about the concept of "mastering". A recording engineer, the band, whomever, create a final mix, on digital or analog, it doesn't really matter. That's the copy that they submit as the "final" edition of the work. This then goes to a mastering engineer, who prepares it for the specific medium in use. This is true for any recorded medium, whether analog or digital, audio or video, and includes very subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle EQ and other "sweeting" of the work for that particular medium. In the case of making an LP, for example, the mastering engineer also applies the RIAA companding used on all LPs. This is a full curve of cuts and boosts, but specifically, lows are cut by 20dB, and highs are boosted by 20dB, during the mastering process. This allows a full 22 minutes of audio to fit per LP side... full bass would produce gigantic groves, lowering the time considerable, and also causing most tone arms to be sent skating across the disc. As well, highs are boosted by 20dB, to eliminate (on playback, when the 20dB cut is applied) much of the terrible high frequency hiss you pick up at high frequencies on an LP (this is the same basic principle used on Dolby noise reduction used on tape).

Completely different things are done taking a final digital mix (probably at 24/32-bit at 96/192kHz sampling these days) and producing a CD master: different EQ, downsampling with dithering and noise shaping, etc. Now technically, you could do most of the CD master in analog... and there are plenty of recording and mastering engineers who still use analog gear in the process, going from digital, though analog EQ or other gear, then back to digital... that's actually more of a point of controversy between engineers these days than the use of non-linear digital for recording and storage. The point is, you're still mastering FOR the CD, not simply taking an existing master for another medium onto that CD. And similarly, no one would take a CD master and just drop that on LP, either... they create a new master from the original final mix.

So yeah, if you did take an analog master, made for an LP or even cassette, just digitize it, and stamp it on a CD, it's going to sound poor. And this was done, sometimes by supposed "accident", other times just to get stuff out for the CD "gold rush".... but [hopefully] not in recent times. And many of those early fails have been digital remastered for CD (occasionally even for the better formats, SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-Ray), and

What did you think of this sentence, Grandpa?

The turntable, once thought to have taken up obsolescence with eight-track tape players

These kids today, eight track tapes sucked and always did. And they don't listen, do they? I tolds these punks about eight tracks almost five years ago in Good Riddance to Bad Tech :

The 8-track tape
This sorry piece of crap is proof positive of American stupidity. The cassette - the (now obsolete) four track, two-spindle, 1/8th inch, 1 /78 IPS shirt pocket sized tape cassette was produced before the 8-track. The four track cassette was originally made as a dictation device, but advances in tape manufacture and head design soon gave them a frequency response that came close to human hearing's limit, signal to noise ratio low enough that you had to turn it up very loud to hear the hiss, and inaudible harmonic distortion which made them ideal for music.

Nevertheless, the 8-track was born anyway. With its transport speed at twice the 4-track cassette's speed, it should have been audibly superior. However, the "powers that be" decided that 8-tracks were going to be for automobiles, which at the time were not as well insulated from outside sounds and wind as today's cars, and with the auto's horrible acoustics, it was OK for a car's music to sound like effluent.

But the deliberately bad sound wasn't bad enough. The eight track tape had a single spindle, a very clever design where the tape fed from the center of the spindle, around a capstain roller inside the housing and back to the outside of the roll of tape. This made for an expensive setup, and one that was prone to wow and flutter, as well as having the tape get "eaten" by the tape player. And unlike a cassette, if your 8-track got ate, you might as well throw it in the trash.

But wait, there's more! This thing was deemed to be for the car, while cassettes were going to be (by about 1970 or so) for the home.

This made no sense whatever, since the "portable" eight track took up as much space as four cassettes, without being able to play any longer than a cassette. In fact, you could buy a longer playing cassette than 8-track.

But the one thing more than anything else that made 8-tracks suck like a Hoover was the fact that it had to change tracks four times during an album. This usually necessitated at least one song and usually more being interrupted in the middle!

Folks finally, after about ten years, started figuring this stuff out for themselves and replaced their 8-track cartriges with 4 track cassettes. Me? I never had an 8-track, although all my friends did. I, the geek, used the far more logical cassettes since about 1966 or 7. Hah! The geek gets the last laugh again!

They don't understand vinyl, either. Led Zeppelin's Presence album sounds far better than the equivalent CD; it has more, well, presence. It has sharper highs and deeper lows than the CD version (that is, if you have a good turntable). But the CD of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit will sound better than the vinyl.

Zeppelin was mastered in analog, Nirvana was mastered in digital. If you make an analog recording from a digital source, or a digital recording for an analog source, you get the worst aspects of both mediums and the advantages of neither.

If your digital master for you LP is sampled at higher sampling rates than CD's 44.1, the LP may possibly sound better than the CD, but I'd guess it would take more than just twice the sampling rate to make an appreciable difference. Make the sampling rate ten times that of current CDs and the digital file would blow the LP away.

But taking a 44.1 master and putting it on LP is just silly. doubling that is less silly but still silly.

the article itself is nothing less than enthusiastic about the range of uses for it.

Sad, isn't it? At least I think so. Like someone's sig said, Orwell was an optimist.

What I see happening more and more is that people are fearing technology because of what "bad people" will do with it

Unfortunately the very worst people run the world's governments. Tech that the powerful can have but I can't have IS bad tech. You don't think your government will let you build one of these to look through your governor's walls, do you? Hell, many governments won't even let the population have firearms. The fault isn't technology, it's technology that you posess and I can't.

I'd only embrace this technology if legal safeguards are in place, and considering that my government is a whooly-owned subsidiary of the corporations, I doubt that will happen. If you say "tech is tech" you're wrong. No irony, just your own misunderstanding of the bigger picture.

// The specific idiot in this case is Office95, which likes
// to free a random pointer when you start Word95 from a desktop
// shortcut.

Sigh...