Slashdot Mirror

Grump sent in a story saying "Ask any iPod user what they like the most about their device, and most will probably mention the scrollwheel. Here is the story behind the company that makes it (hint: it's not Apple). Great not just for the history, but insight as to both how Apple's design process works, and how the scroll wheel itself works."

macdaddypunk writes "Two weeks ago, CNET unveiled Download.com Music (mistaken by some for the new MP3.com). A week ago, they told the press that the real MP3.com was open for business, yet the site itself still said "coming soon." Today, MP3.com is finally live, and off to a sputtering start. It's a combination of tech articles and a meta-search for major-label downloads. For example, with a single search you can find that 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles is not available for legal download at iTunes, Napster, or anywhere else. The tech content includes such gems as 'how to copy your old vinyl records onto CDs.' The real news is what it does NOT include: no free downloads, and no indie artist community. (As reported earlier, the former MP3.com archive of 1.7 million songs was instead resurrected by another independent music community). The new MP3.com's search results don't even include the 3,500 indie artists from Download.com Music."

macdaddypunk writes "Two weeks ago, CNET unveiled Download.com Music (mistaken by some for the new MP3.com). A week ago, they told the press that the real MP3.com was open for business, yet the site itself still said "coming soon." Today, MP3.com is finally live, and off to a sputtering start. It's a combination of tech articles and a meta-search for major-label downloads. For example, with a single search you can find that 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles is not available for legal download at iTunes, Napster, or anywhere else. The tech content includes such gems as 'how to copy your old vinyl records onto CDs.' The real news is what it does NOT include: no free downloads, and no indie artist community. (As reported earlier, the former MP3.com archive of 1.7 million songs was instead resurrected by another independent music community). The new MP3.com's search results don't even include the 3,500 indie artists from Download.com Music."

macdaddypunk writes "Two weeks ago, CNET unveiled Download.com Music (mistaken by some for the new MP3.com). A week ago, they told the press that the real MP3.com was open for business, yet the site itself still said "coming soon." Today, MP3.com is finally live, and off to a sputtering start. It's a combination of tech articles and a meta-search for major-label downloads. For example, with a single search you can find that 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles is not available for legal download at iTunes, Napster, or anywhere else. The tech content includes such gems as 'how to copy your old vinyl records onto CDs.' The real news is what it does NOT include: no free downloads, and no indie artist community. (As reported earlier, the former MP3.com archive of 1.7 million songs was instead resurrected by another independent music community). The new MP3.com's search results don't even include the 3,500 indie artists from Download.com Music."

macdaddypunk writes "Today CNET Networks unveiled the service that has taken them five months to build: the new (but not-necessarily-improved) MP3.com. The site offers free downloads and a place to upload music, but it lacks the extra features of the original MP3.com, and it has a meager selection of barely 2,000 artists. The best part: their charts are literally random (songs are sorted by number of downloads, currently zero for all songs!). Smells like a hasty launch, perhaps rushed by last week's news that the original MP3.com archive (1.7 million songs) has been resurrected by another free MP3 download site, GarageBand.com."

jlouderb writes "At least that's what they are calling it. Cowan Alexander is getting ready to auction off the assets of MP3.com (now owned by CNet) on March 10th and 11th. The items up for sale include lots of those dumb Herman Miller Aeron chairs that were so popular, along with servers and notebooks that are probably hopelessly out of date. The best part, though -- a 1997 yellow hummer and a 1994 "Fat Boy" Harley. Plus, they've got pictures!"

DarkHand writes "Researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) have spent three years looking for trace remains of pharmaceuticals in drainage water and the sea near Tromsoe in northern Norway. The project has focused on 16 substances and a high concentration of caffeine was one of the surprising finds. Need a lift in the morning? Have a refreshing glass of seawater!"

bmarklein writes "Looks like mp3.com is no more, at least not in its current form. According to an announcement on an mp3.com message board, CNet has acquired assets of mp3.com. The statement is very vague, but it says that following the redirection of the mp3.com domain on December 2nd, "all content will be deleted from [mp3.com's] servers." However they do plan to eventually introduce "new and enhanced artist services"."

floppy ears writes "Watch out for the new Anthony Hamilton CD, Coming From Where I'm From. The CD has two sets of tracks: one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped, and a duplicate set of tracks in WMA format. In CD players, the disc plays normally (in theory). When put into a computer, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, but allows you to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive. What a shame that I'm running Linux and my portable MP3 player doesn't support WMA."

JimCricket writes "After almost a year of preparation, the person behind MP3.com and Lindows has unveiled his latest venture: SIPphone. According to a CNET article, the new company sells VoIP-based telephones. I wonder what kind of latency you get with these devices." Interestingly, the CNET article reveals the telephones "...can only call other phones that use the same technology."

mshiltonj writes "I noticed today that mp3.com no longer offers high-bandwidth streams for its genres or stations, although it looks like artists' playlists and individual songs are available in high bandwidth. mp3.com has lots and lots of free music that was free and legal to listen to online, and a good number of my "music bookmarks" were on mp3.com. I'll live (I've still got my favorite stream), but I don't think it's a good sign. Is streaming music doomed to die, not because of RIAA litigation, but because of expensive bandwidth costs?" I don't think bandwidth will be the determining cost - that's a price that has been falling and will continue to fall. But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?

mshiltonj writes "I noticed today that mp3.com no longer offers high-bandwidth streams for its genres or stations, although it looks like artists' playlists and individual songs are available in high bandwidth. mp3.com has lots and lots of free music that was free and legal to listen to online, and a good number of my "music bookmarks" were on mp3.com. I'll live (I've still got my favorite stream), but I don't think it's a good sign. Is streaming music doomed to die, not because of RIAA litigation, but because of expensive bandwidth costs?" I don't think bandwidth will be the determining cost - that's a price that has been falling and will continue to fall. But are things like iTunes store the future, or is it streaming?

Lindows CEO Michael Robertson is vilified by many Linux advocates. At the same time, he is probably drawing more attention to desktop Linux than anyone else in the world. Is he evil? Or is he just a typical American businessman trying to make it big (for the second time; before Lindows, he founded -- and later sold -- MP3.com)? One thing is for sure: Unlike many CEOs, he'll give a plain-talk answer to a straight question. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions submitted here by Slashdot readers to Robertson tomorrow, and run his answers, unedited, as soon as he gets them back to us.

Max Romantschuk writes "Nikkei Electronics Asia reports that "The Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) and Sharp Corp have developed basic technology for making effective bio-fuel cells". Apparently these fuel cells can be powered by regular kitchen waste. The future for technology like this should be rosy, taking into account the increased pressure put on all areas of power generation for more ecologically friendly alternatives."

icewalker asks: "There has been a lot of news (here, here, and here) lately about music, copy protection, and other related issues. What I find interesting is that there are literally thousands of free bands out there that are more than worthy of listening too. Free as in they have not sold their souls (not to mention music rights) away to the devils of the music industry. But how does one get to listen to these pioneers of music? The solution could be sites like mp3.com (until the mp3 royalties are forced). But what people want is a locals only site that streams, guess what, the music from free local bands only. Not just for your community but local bands from all over the US (and the world). We need a site that collects these bands and we need a streamer that plays them. No CARP royalty problems since these bands are unsigned and own the music themselves. Make it so that the artists can hopefully sell their own CD's or single songs from the same site. Anyway, mix and bake at multiple bit rates and you have a solution to the copy protected CD (I haven't bought one yet from an Indie Band). The big guys go down because they can't compete with free, better than great music on the web with a low cost distribution. So, where is this utopia? Oh! And dump the necessary registration required to listen (are you listening mp3.com?)."

pmorelli writes: "Maybe there's hope for the media dinosaurs yet: According to News.com, Vivendi is teaming up with Maverick Records, MP3.com, RollingStone.com, GetMusic.com and MP4.com to offer a remix of a Meshell Ndegeocello track, 'Earth,' for $0.99 online. No restrictions, just a plain old MP3. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of her stuff, I just may pony up a whole buck to economically encourage this sort of behavior."

zilym writes "Think about a class of portable devices that include storage space, wireless networking (ala 802.11b), and user loadable Software. For these devices, why not implement a protocol for adhoc, wireless data sharing (Pocket P2P)? This is what I'm imagining... Lots of people carry around Pocket P2P devices hidden in their car, backpack, purse, pocket, handglider, whatever. Normally these devices stay half dormant, listening to see if another Pocket P2P device is in range. When one or more Pocket P2P's get within range of each other, they automatically trade their data store with each other." This is a keen glance at the future with enormous consequences -- unless copyright law is drastically extended, a clever hardware hack a decade from now could be the Model A to Napster's Model T. Are we living in the ten-year bubble before the collapse of entertainment media copy prevention?

"IMHO this vehicle for data sharing would be very discreet, anonymous, and unstoppable. Your ISP would not be involved, so they can't block your traffic. In a sufficiently crowded area of people, it would be difficult to pick out someone transmitting data and nearly impossible to locate person(s) storing a copy of said data. Pocket P2P transfers would be local and spontaneous in nature, so an organization trying to stamp it out would essentially need enforcement spying everywhere, equipped with RF detection and triangulation tools.

The devices for doing this already exist, albeit in slightly suboptimal forms (laptops, palmtops, and PDAs). However, it should not be impossible for enterprising engineers to eventually build more specialized devices toward this goal."

Technological predictions are fun and easy. Ethernet NICs cost $100 ten years ago and $10 now; 802.11b cards cost about $100 now and might cost $10 in 2012. So by then, will some entrepreneur be able to build an MP3 storage/playback device with wireless capability for $50 or $60? Think "Sony Walkman that trades music with whatever other devices are around."

The hard part is legal predictions. Right now the entertainment industry is trying hard to reduce the power of fair-use exceptions to copyright law, and thereby expand their own power. And they've made their key weapons things like the DMCA and the doctrine of "contributory copyright infringement" -- going after not music's fans, but the corporations that enable music sharing. The corporations that provide your access become the bottleneck that the copyright holders can control.

But suppose someone released a Walkman-sized, cheap MP3 player that had a wireless network card used to download (legitimately acquired) MP3s from your computer? It's not Napsteresque; it's like Apple's doohickey, except it connects wirelessly. That's all.

And then suppose it turned out that a simple command given from that computer could trivially put your player into a promiscuous, music-sharing mode?

The device need not connect to the internet (perhaps it can't) -- it talks to whatever other devices are around. "I like Jimmy Buffett, anyone got any Jimmy Buffett? I'll trade it for some Wayne Newton." A short-range hardware Gnutella. Set some parameters, go for a walk in a public park, come home with some new music. Pass it along.

(Your problem becomes spam -- come home from the park with ad jingles disguised as Jimmy Buffett... better to trade at parties with people who are friends of friends...)

This would surely stretch "fair use" to the breaking point -- but the question becomes, what part of the chain would the copyright holders be able to attack?

Rauchenator points to an article on Yahoo! about "the new enhanced Honda Asimo which now can gracefully walk down stairs, respond to human commands and even work like a receptionist (Sit there). The Honda site even has videos showcasing the robot doing its thing. The article points out that the robot makes celebrity-size salaries when put on display, too."

Rimbo asks: "MP3.com has recently announced that as of October 1st, artist royalties will be slashed. 1000 listens used to be worth about $30; they will soon be worth $5. Since MP3.com requires that artists pay $19.95 per month just to get the royalties, breaking even -- which used to be easy -- is now impossible for most artists. Most of the artists are now out of what used to be a major source of income. So where can independent artists go now?"

"A tool like Mojo Nation won't work quite as well, since we rely on the web to do our advertising -- unless a cgi or java front-end exists for it. And other audio hosting sites such as Java Music and Ampcast seem likely to feel the same financial crunch that MP3.com has.

Much of these recent changes were expected with the Vivendi buy-out. But it's clear that the business model wasn't working, either. MP3.com has to face overhead and has to get its money from somewhere. It can't just serve up MP3's for free to everyone.

It seems to me that the best way to go would be some method whereby listeners can try music before they pay for it, and when they do pay, can do so conveniently and without having to pay very much. I know that most artists would be able to do very well for themselves with as little as a nickel per download. Would you be willing to pay that much? What would be a convenient way to pay that you would feel is secure and private?"

Rimbo asks: "MP3.com has recently announced that as of October 1st, artist royalties will be slashed. 1000 listens used to be worth about $30; they will soon be worth $5. Since MP3.com requires that artists pay $19.95 per month just to get the royalties, breaking even -- which used to be easy -- is now impossible for most artists. Most of the artists are now out of what used to be a major source of income. So where can independent artists go now?"

"A tool like Mojo Nation won't work quite as well, since we rely on the web to do our advertising -- unless a cgi or java front-end exists for it. And other audio hosting sites such as Java Music and Ampcast seem likely to feel the same financial crunch that MP3.com has.

Much of these recent changes were expected with the Vivendi buy-out. But it's clear that the business model wasn't working, either. MP3.com has to face overhead and has to get its money from somewhere. It can't just serve up MP3's for free to everyone.

It seems to me that the best way to go would be some method whereby listeners can try music before they pay for it, and when they do pay, can do so conveniently and without having to pay very much. I know that most artists would be able to do very well for themselves with as little as a nickel per download. Would you be willing to pay that much? What would be a convenient way to pay that you would feel is secure and private?"

nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"

nelomolen writes: "Looks like MP3.com is trying to promote a new $2.99/month ($29.99/year) ad-free service. as a listener I've come to love MP3.com as it provides exposure to a LOT of good music (and bad). In the past I know artists have had it out for MP3.com in regards to their "payback for playback" -- wonder if this new ad-free subscription service will help?"

d0om asks: "I'm curious if there is a program that allows one to view a graphical, three-dimensional representation of data, much like in the Matrix concept in the book Neuromancer where you have a grid of different blocks of data, all presented visually. I'm curious if anyone can recommend anything of this sort to me."

baptiste writes "I came across a story in Wired News that on first glance had to be a joke. The scary part is, its not. The RIAA is looking to start their own MP3 streaming services, but they are also trying to stiff the song writers who hold copyrights on the lyrics. The RIAA doesn't want to pay the songwriters royalties on streamed copies of songs and has petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office to settle the matter. I highly recommend you read the petition - if you didn't know better, you'd think it was from Napster or MP3.com. The irony is almost too much."

LHOOQtius_ov_Borg writes: "A CNet article discusses Yahoo! considering more subscription-fee based premium services. The article points out that other sites, such as TheStreet.Com, have not had success with this. It also mentions that Yahoo has stated that less than 10% of their current revenue comes from 'pure play' Internet companies and 'financially questionable' advertisers.'" Added to which, ABetterRoss writes, "Submitting to some Yahoo categories is no longer free. from the FAQ: "In our ongoing effort to 1) build a useful, comprehensive Web directory and 2) address the needs of people submitting sites to the directory, we have expanded our fee-based Business Express program to cover all submissions to our main commercial categories: 'Business and Economy/Business to Business' and 'Business and Economy/Shopping and Services.'"

LinuxBand sent in linkage to a nice story talking about the NES as it now is celebrating its 15th year. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had a nintendo, I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA.

This is Slashback. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. But if you want to, read below some interesting bits on: the first digital computers (who sez?!); neural nets with the ability to whip your behind; your chance to bring your ideal OS to life, under adult supervision; and Yes, a note on Mir, which has so far failed to hit my new loft.

(This item ceremonially closer to orbit) pcidevel writes: "According to this page at Mirstation.com there is no plans to down Mir and in fact a launch has been approved to make sure Mir has a long stay in orbit." I'm sure everyone with plans to visit (James Cameron on down / up) will be cheered to the cockles. I think I'll wait till the .1 release;)

To hell with anyone who won't help out ;) jonathan_atkinson writes: "The V2_OS (www.v2os.cx) that you featured twice a while back is currently undergoing a kernel rewrite. Having taken on some of the criticisms that Slashdot readers threw at us at the time (it hurt back then... but this is our baby :P), the kernel is being rewritten from scratch, using a fully modular architecture. An interesting project to be involved with ... So, any Slashdot readers who have wanted to get involved with a cool project like this, contact one of the project leaders in #v2os on EFnet or visit the website. Plenty of you had criticisms and ideas the last time this story was posted, lets see if anyone wants to put them into practise!"

"I was here first! No I was here first! Mom!" afrop writes: "Like Tesla vs Marconi in the field of radio, history seems to have already sealed the fate of ENIAC vs ABC. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is almost always overlooked when people say 'first digital computer', despite the 1973 court decision invalidating the ENIAC patents, and declaring Atanasoff the inventor of the first digital computer. History may have forgotten the ABC, but we shouldn't."

Similarly, An unnamed correspondent writes: "You've posted several things recently about the computing history, and you always claim the ENIAC or whatever was first. You really should post this link to the first electronic digital computer, from which the creators of ENIAC got some of their ideas. http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/jva-archive.shtml"

Interesting links, both. Of course, there are a lot of interesting devices which predate both of these, including the mysterious bronze computing device found aboard an Agean wreck.

And if you feel like turning over the rocks of history to find those little bugs that curl into balls, and wondering what the ancients would have called them, wonder, if not no more, at least a bit less -- GE Bickford writes: "While there is certainly a distinction between various individuals who hack, I have found a very early usage of "hacker" that demonstrates that the artificial semantic distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is a vain conceit. This citation proves that the term "hacker" from the very beginning involved an implicit violation of 'territory' (trespassing) and threat to system integrity (vandalism). It also shows that hackers were considered at least a potential threat from the earliest days of the internet (then ARPANET). I note that the term 'cracker' didn't come into use until at least the late 1980s if not 1990s:
"We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage "hackers", although it is obviously insufficient to protect a node against a determined and malicious attack." - RCF521."

Bring me the head of Michelle Pong! You may have thought it was cool that a neural net could be taught to recognize the spoken word "one," but how about one that does useful work instead? Specifically, LinuxBand writes: "http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/~watta/MM/pong/pong5.html this thing is pretty cool, teach it by hitting the ball for awhile and then try playing against it and watch it kick yer arse."

A reader writes: "Linux and MacOS versions of Parsec LAN-Test have been released! Windows version will follow soon. The game will also be included on the European version of Red Hat Linux 7, with more than 50 minutes of music by Stefan Poiss. You can download the game here. Please use the mirrors."

kwhite asks: "Unlike many of the /. community I have not made the jump to Naptser, Gnutella, etc. due to the belief that I think it is wrong. I was just curious to know of what 'legal' websites there are out there that give away MP3's or some other kind of compressed music format. The only good site I have found so far is downloadsdirect.com. This site has a lot of free downloads, and others that allow you to pay by song. Just curious as to know whether anyone else has found any other good sites out there?" There is, of course, the ever popular MP3.Com but are there other sites out there that legally distribute MP3s? Do others feel as I do that the RIAA should have answered this question a long time ago? (Especially considering the fuss they've made about Napster.)

adric writes: "It seems that MP3.com has removed decss.mp3 (but its still available), allegedly for having "offensive lyrics". You can read a bit more here. The best part is the gallery of DeCSS showing the world of clever places this little bit of code has migrated to. T-Shirts, songs, poetry, non-existent languages, PNG comments, embedded in jpgs, gifs, and more. Even if the MPAA's lawyers can make source code illegal, they'll never remove DeCSS from the Net. Can everyone please just drop this now and let us have Linux drivers (and for that matter, let us fast forward through commercials on DVDs!)

retep writes: "MP3.com is planning to restart the My.MP3.com service that launched the lawsuit against it. However, it will probably launch without any music from Universal Music Corp. Instead it will probably offer music from record companies that have reached licensing deals with MP3.com Full story online at 32bitonline. " This had actually been submitted earlier, but this story had some additional information. The Universal is a key part because those are the ones who won the lawsuit against MP3.com, while they've managed to settle with almost everyone else.

IWantMyMP3 asks: "I used to read The New Musical Express to know about new good music. But NME seems to ignore all related to MP3. And there is a lot of free (gratis) music at MP3.com, Vitaminic.com and so on. I'm looking for a website (perhaps a Slash-based one) where to read previews about all this free stuff in MP3. Then perhaps I'll be able to say goodbye to those stupid summer songs that are played over and over again on the radio stations, tapping on my head." It would be nice if folks actually started paying attention to the lesser known artists out there who actually release on MP3. Such a site would be a good first step if it doesn't exist already. Any ideas?

There's been a number of things happening of late in the MP3 world - first off, MP3.com has complied with the Federal Court ruling by silencing (their term) major label albums. They're still including classical and indie tracks, but not much major label stuff. Also, ZD is carrying a story about Dr. Dre gearing up to ask Napster to ban users a la Metallica. I also got an e-mail from folks at SpeakOut who are trying to help out people hit by the Metallica/Napster deal - so, if you got banned check it out.

Ancipital noted that a new hotmail hole has sprung up. This one is, like the ILUVYOU bug, a VBS macro attachment that must be executed by people with very (ok, who does this, huh? I mean, viewing a gif or clicking a URL, but running a strange program? The mind boggles).

conraduno writes "Looks like Aiwa is releasing a car stereo MP3 player which loads tracks from a CD. Called the CDC-MP3, it plays CD's, CD-R's, and CD-RW's. Now all I need is a burner. " Here's a few more details from mp3.com.

spludge writes: "Remember the PJB-100? The portable 4.6 gig hard-drive MP3 player -- the one that did not have support for Linux? Compaq just released all the code to communicate and control it under the GPL! All the code and documentation is available for linux and for windows. Read about the details and what you'll need online. Lots of information about how the PJB works and how to communicate with it via USB."

sarchasm writes, "Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney's publishing company MPL Communications is suing MP3.com. It's good to see that another poor starving artist is helping to fight the big bad MP3 movement. For more info, see the story on Yahoo. "

Nik4 writes "As per this news item on Yahoo, MP3.com has filed a law suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its president, Hilary Rosen. More details are available here on the MP3.com site. MP3.com is complaining of defamation, trade libel, interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair business practices. " At this point, I think it's safe to say that the MP3 will be locked up in court for quite some time - and in the meantime, MP3 will become more and more the standard.

Nik4 writes "As per this news item on Yahoo, MP3.com has filed a law suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its president, Hilary Rosen. More details are available here on the MP3.com site. MP3.com is complaining of defamation, trade libel, interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair business practices. " At this point, I think it's safe to say that the MP3 will be locked up in court for quite some time - and in the meantime, MP3 will become more and more the standard.

kurowski writes "My.MP3.com has released a Linux port of its Beam-it software. It relies on a closed-source library, but the (command-line) Beam-it front end comes with source and is GPLed. Way cool! (By the way it acutally works, too.) " We've been playing around with something similar in our office for a while - it's a lot of fun to have.

I'd like to thank the author of this book for sending it to me. Nick's written a book that's touching and endearing, and one that's well worth reading for everyone who's ever had social struggles to deal with. As well, his involvement with the fine folks of TheVenue. I'll warn you - it's not a tech text. But it's still worth reading. Click below to read more. E-mails from (Over?) The Edge? author Nick Woolsey pages ? publisher Wolly Hat Publishing, 11/1999 rating 9/10 reviewer Miss Erin ISBN 0968611001 summary The struggle of one geek

Every so often a book comes along that speaks directly to a reader, and this is one that spoke directly to me. Nick Woolsey has created a work for our time, but also a work for anyone of any age. Woolsey is in his mid-20s, Canadian, and painfully honest. "E-mails" details his experiences over a period of time in a variety of places (both mental and physical). It is comprised of e-mails to and from his best friend, accounts of miscellaneous travels, musings, poems, stories, and even conversations had by some men in his head who seem determined to make his life hell. I'm not exactly sure how to even classify these experiences he has, but I believe that spiritual is probably the best word I could offer. Woolsey gives an account of his own realizations about himself, his place in world, personal responsibility, and the responsibility of others. He isn't kidding when he calls himself a "cyber-visionary;" his ideas really are quite visionary (but a bit too complicated for me to explain here - to understand more, go to www.thevenue.org, which details their vision, goals, and plans for the future). Throughout the book, he describes his surge of fairly brilliant ideas, coupled with lack of funds/losing it, and the effect of all of this.

We are invited to follow Woolsey on his various endeavors, ranging from the Yasodhara Ashram to tree planting, and from the Oregon County Fair to launching several communications revolutions. As he meets an assortment of interesting people (some wonderful, others on the brink of insanity), we too experience these individuals, and are even reminded occasionally of people we know ourselves. At times Woolsey may feel like he's going to lose it, and we worry that he will as well, but somehow he manages to make it, and thank goodness he did.

Woolsey articulates his personal troubles and the sorrows of his generation with honesty, sincerity, and simplicity. He is a sympathetic and forthright voice during a time when it seems like most twenty-somethings are publishing whiny monologues about an excess of sex, drugs, and mental illness. Although all of these elements are present in the book, Woolsey maintains dignity and humor despite the struggles he faces. His honesty about mental illness is particularly striking; rather than dwelling on the pain at hand, he trudges on, hard as it may be, until there's a little bit of light. In modern culture, this sort of attitude is nearly extinct, so to read about a real live person who didn't immediately check himself into a hospital, go on psychiatric drugs, or commit suicide, is a very refreshing perspective. Woolsey turns to prayer, meditation, some fantastic friends, and himself - doing the polar opposite of what so many other people his age do when life presents adversity.

I'll agree that Woolsey's struggles are similar to those of much of his generation - uncertainty, doubt, fear of the future, depression - and also similar to many other people in the general population. However, his unique voice sets him apart, giving the reader hope rather than wanting to disappear into oblivion. He's humorous and wise beyond his years (at least I think so, not that I've attained those years - but he certainly seems wise to me). Though the prose itself is somewhat scattered (as illustrated in the section after a particularly awful discussion with Becky, his sometime-girlfriend, about three-quarters of the way through the book), there is something refreshing and strangely comforting about his style, which flips between e-mails, journal-ish entries, musings, conversations, and rants. For his subject matter and in this era, his voice is right on. We live in an age where technology is being incorporated into virtually every sector, so why not have e-mails in books? Why not embrace the technology and implement it into other areas?

In short, anyone should read this book, but particularly people struggling with their lives, their futures, uncertainty, and general doubt. Woolsey offers hope to those of us who think that we really will spend our lives wandering from place to place, never quite sure of where we're supposed to be or what we're supposed to be doing. His attitude is so positive, even when you're certain it really can't get any worse for him, and you can't help but wish you'd been one of those people to help him out along the way. His honesty and humor in relating the story of his own experiences bring flat-out laughter and a great deal of sympathy, and anyone can connect with his search for meaning in a pretty crazy (but sometimes pretty surprisingly fantastic) world.

Property of Miss Erin @Bluescript

The most important thing is to not stop questioning -Albert Einstein-

Listen to a recording on MP3.com.

Pick this up at TheVenue.

Mutok pointed us to MP3.com's new Beat It program. It is of course windows only which means I've never tested it, and functionally it works almost exactly like a collection of Perl scripts Nate and I hacked out a year ago to serve our personal collection of MP3s. Basically, the software checks if you have a CD, and it tracks your collection. Then you use the software to track playlists and play your MP3s. There are a lot of interesting legal problems here, and the potential for abuse is high. But dangit if this isn't the future of music, I'm gonna be cranky. Now can I please have a Linux port?

Mutok pointed us to MP3.com's new Beat It program. It is of course windows only which means I've never tested it, and functionally it works almost exactly like a collection of Perl scripts Nate and I hacked out a year ago to serve our personal collection of MP3s. Basically, the software checks if you have a CD, and it tracks your collection. Then you use the software to track playlists and play your MP3s. There are a lot of interesting legal problems here, and the potential for abuse is high. But dangit if this isn't the future of music, I'm gonna be cranky. Now can I please have a Linux port?

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

Slashdot's received a lot of submissions about RIAA actions recently, and the actions of colleges taken after the RIAA sent them nasty letters. One of the interesting things about this is that the RIAA is apparently not listing any specific offenders, just sending general warnings to any and all colleges with computer networks. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, copyright holders acquired several new rights, with the promise they wouldn't abuse them. They're abusing them. (More...)

A good example is a demand letter to a Swiss university, ETH Zurich, which demands that the school immediately terminate all web pages with illegal MP3 files (illegal is of course a judicial decision; the letter presumes that all MP3s are illegal); that the school provide names and home addresses of all students with MP3 files hosted on the school's servers; that the school provide the date that those MP3 files were first hosted (for every MP3 on every server); and that the school provide the IP address for every machine anywhere on the internet which downloaded a MP3 file from the school's servers.

The letter closes with a carrot: we'll adjust our monetary demands based on how well you comply with this letter. Better hope your IP address doesn't appear too many times in those web server logs.

We can probably assume that the demands to U.S. schools are much the same - far-reaching, extortionate letters which are not specific about any particular infringement alleged to be occurring, but which are intended nonetheless to scare the universities into cracking down on their students. The terms of the compromise of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act were that the RIAA and related groups would do the policing of their copyrights - if they found a specific file that they alleged was unlawfully infringing, they have a procedure to follow, specific information to provide about the specific infringing file, and the ISP (college or whatever) is supposed to "do their part" by deleting/removing said file if the paperwork is correct. ISPs and colleges are not supposed to do the grunt work themselves - that results in the kind of overbroad crackdowns that we've seen. This was the subject of specific negotiations during the process of creating this law.

But the RIAA, of course, would prefer that schools and ISPs do their cracking down for them. So they send these general scare letters, hoping to trigger a reaction.

Scare tactics work. Universities scan through student computers, trying passwords on protected directories. The new Rio players will incorporate all of the RIAA's desired protections against copying of MP3 files - the price of settling the RIAA's lawsuit. The next target is Napster.

RIAA will now be filing suit against Napster, an application which effectively functions like a single purpose IRC server, connecting people who want to share MP3 files, whether legally or not. (There's a linux port of Napster; better download it quick.) Some schools, like Oregon State University, are so scared they're blocking all access to Napster servers from school systems. In the ideal world, Napster should probably win - the RIAA could monitor their servers and demand that infringing users be eliminated, but the service equally provides people with an avenue to share legal MP3 files, and this significant non-infringing use is all that is needed under copyright law. The article I just linked to and a nice Wired story both show Napster feebly trying to insist on their duties under the DMCA, saying that the RIAA needs to tell them in writing about specific instances of infringement - but the RIAA doesn't care about the law.

Napster, of course, has no money to fight a lawsuit. This is exactly what happened to the Rio: they won in court, but since the RIAA planned to appeal the suit and drain more money out of Diamond Multimedia, they settled by promising that future Rio's would include the RIAA's copyright protections. Like the Dentist's extortion tactics in Cryptonomicon[1], RIAA lawsuits are equally powerful whether they are on solid legal grounds or not - Napster will lose this suit, whether they win or lose, because the RIAA can afford the money to fight it and Napster cannot. So presumably Napster and RIAA will come to some agreement, settle the lawsuit, and Napster's next generation will incorporate the RIAA's demanded copyright protection system.

Just remember, RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen says she loves the idea of Napster to build communities, "but not on the backs of huge mega-corporations with billions of dollars of revenue quarterly."[2]

The RIAA is hardly the only abuser. The Business Software Alliance, essentially a front group for protecting Microsoft's copyrights, does similar things with regard to "pirated" software. (What a PR genius it was who thought of describing all copying of software as piracy! Probably the same person behind the "cyber-squatter" label for anyone who owns a domain that a company covets.) The BSA is now raiding homes of people accused of copying software.

The idea behind copyright is to expand the amount of information available to the public by creating a government-mandated monopoly on reproducing it - for a limited time (28 years maximum, at the beginning - today the maximum copyright term could be over 150 years). Copyright has always has the inherent give-back to society - the work would pass out of protection, and then anyone could copy it and use it as they saw fit. But copyright is now essentially unlimited - over the last twenty years, the length of the copyright period has increased by forty years, so that essentially no materials produced since World War I have entered the public domain. In about 15-18 years, copyright holders will again be petitioning Congress to extend the copyright term, so that entities like Mickey Mouse never enter the public domain. The extension is now being challenged as unconstitutional, but the challengers lost in District Court and it's far from certain that this suit can succeed.

In today's world, it's customary to speak of copyright as some sort of innate right. It isn't. It's there for the betterment of society, but its functioning, today, contributes nothing to society - all it is is a government-sanctioned monopoly transferring money from your pocket to others, with nothing ever given back - and no possibility of give-backs until 2019, under current law.

We need to rethink copyright. It's not a fundamental right of corporations to receive a 95-year government monopoly. Businesses plan on a five-year cycle - if something isn't forecast to make a return on investment in five years, it doesn't get done. A five-year grant of copyright to corporate authors would serve just as well in promoting the development of new material, and would bring a tremendous amount of material into the public domain, which is copyright's true intent. With a much smaller amount of material actually under copyright, enforcement of it would be far simpler and more straightforward.

But naturally this would cost certain companies a lot of money - they're used to wallowing in their government-granted monopoly. Disney has made back their costs for creating Mickey Mouse billions of times over, but they're used to the cash flow now and would be willing to buy an entire Congress to protect it. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed with the aid of a great deal of subterfuge, but most importantly, a great deal of campaign contributions. Now you can be a criminal not just for actually copying anything, but for making a "device" (hardware or software) which facilitates copying - we're talking five years in Federal prison. Imagine doing five years in Federal prison so that Congress can protect their campaign donations, errr, I mean, Disney's cash flow.

We're extremely close to the day when debuggers are illegal. Through threats, strategic campaign donations, and outright extortion practiced on upstart companies, copyright-holders like the RIAA are building copyright protection into the very infrastructure of computing.

Making changes in this system requires a fundamental commitment from the U.S. populace that it be changed. The commitment doesn't exist yet, but as more and more people experience the power of copyright to affect what they can and cannot publish online, and the abuses of the companies dedicated to protecting copyright beyond the terms of the increasingly-protective law, perhaps it will in the future.

Some slashdot readers will no doubt say, "Open source, you idiot!" Open source is a reaction to these problems, not a solution to them. Despite the open source phenomenon, the trend is toward more and more works being locked up, and locked up permanently, behind laws and cryptographic protocols. It shouldn't have to be a war between words, pictures and code that is always free to use and words, pictures and code that is locked up for all eternity - we should demand that the social contract envisioned in the Constitution be fulfilled by forcing copyright holders to give back to society, whether they want to or not.

-- Michael Sims

[1] Gratuitous Cryptonomicon reference provided free of charge.

[2] Quote may not reflect Rosen's exact words, but does reflect her intent.

Juan Fernando writes "I just noticed this newsbit over at mp3.com covering an $80 enhancement for 1st Generation Playstations that allows them to playback CDs chock full of mp3s. The product is called PSXAMP/MP3, is made by Fullway, and is currently available in Europa/Asis and soon in the US. mp3enhancer is taking preorders now."

Juan Fernando writes "I just noticed this newsbit over at mp3.com covering an $80 enhancement for 1st Generation Playstations that allows them to playback CDs chock full of mp3s. The product is called PSXAMP/MP3, is made by Fullway, and is currently available in Europa/Asis and soon in the US. mp3enhancer is taking preorders now."

What do Microsoft, AOL, IBM, MCI Worldcom, Bell Canada, British Telecommunications (BT), Bertelsmann, Demon Internet, Cable and Wireless, Deutsche Telecom, the Japanese Electronic Network Consortium, EuroISPA, and UUNet have in common with the United Kingdom, Germany, the European Union, and Australia? They're all working together on a plan to censor the Internet.

Hundreds of people from around the world are coming together in Munich for a three-day conference, September 9-11. They represent the largest internet corporations and first-world countries. They've been working on this for years. They have millions of dollars. They're very, very serious. And someone forgot to tell them that information wants to be free.

What's going on?

Labels are the big thing. Labels are everywhere. Television has labels, after Congress threatened to not renew station broadcast licenses if the networks didn't comply. Video games have labels, after Congress threatened the gaming industry. Music has labels, after Congress and Tipper Gore (Al's wife) threatened the recording industry. Anyone remember the 80s, when musicians and fans both seethed at the very idea of labels slapped on our music by some politician? Now even MP3.com has a parental advisory icon.

And of course, movies have labels, the motion picture industry being the most dangerous threat to America's youth next to the internet. Hollywood labors under hundreds of censorship laws.

Now Senator Lieberman wants to rate every audio-visual product produced in the U.S. with a violence labeling system. (Lieberman was primarily responsible for the video game ratings and television ratings as well.)

Proponents of these censorship systems sometimes like to call them "voluntary". They're as voluntary as death and taxes. Or as voluntary as not being able to sell your product at all - that's what Lieberman's bill would dictate, if you don't comply. Salon said it well:

"The point has always been to change what actually gets broadcast through the flexing of government muscle. In simpler times, this was known as censorship."

Labels and censorship go hand in hand. The American Library Association speaks plainly: "Labeling is an attempt to prejudice attitudes and as such, it is a censor's tool." Some groups do stand up for what's right. You'll notice you don't see parental advisories on library books. Yet.

Think of how it works in practice: items with labels are stigmatized, attacked by Congress and pressure groups, and eventually - through law or simple bullying - they aren't available anymore. Think of the NC-17 label. All it's supposed to indicate is fare fit for adults - and since adults are 80% of the population, there ought to be plenty of movies made for them. But since most theaters (over 90%) won't run NC-17 movies, and most newspapers won't carry ads for them, any NC-17 movie is doomed to be a failure. And thus the only movies that make it to the theater are those deemed fit for children. Movies bearing that label were easy to attack - just take the most horrible movie you've ever seen (Debbie Does Dallas? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Stargate?) and whip up a public frenzy, then say, "We can get rid of this filth if only you'll stop showing NC-17 movies, Mr. Theater Owner." The pressure was applied at different steps in the distribution process - at the movie theater chains and newspapers, rather than at the consumer's end - but the result is the same: you can't see it.

Or you can't see it the way it was intended. Stanley Kubrick was known first for his work, and second for the exacting craft with which he set up every single shot. If even Kubrick's famous final-cut contract couldn't keep the MPAA vultures from digitally painting over his sex scenes, how is any director safe?

But we digress. We were talking about labels, and Internet censorship. These things intersect in a technology called PICS.

PICS stands for Platform for an Internet Censorship System - well, close enough. It's a specification for attaching labels to internet content - Web pages, Usenet posts, chatroom messages, emails... anything. In theory, you could rate anything on any scale you chose - journalist Simson Garfinkel made a tongue-in-cheek PICS rating system to rate pages based on the amount of Simson they contain.

But that is theory. In the real world, you could rate music or video games on the basis of Simson too, but nobody does - because life is short. Just like all the other labeling systems, it turns out that the only Internet labeling systems that anyone cares about are pejorative labels - rating pages for sex, or foul language, or heresy, or violence. Why? Because these are what the censors want to get rid of.

The people getting together in Munich are doing so for the purpose of developing a single, uniform, international rating system to be applied to all Internet content worldwide. It's not a voluntary system - several countries have already declared their intent to make it mandatory, and Jim Miller of W3C (and co-creator of PICS) put it nicely when he said -

"It's going to happen and the publishers are going to resist it as long as they can, but they'll have to realise that they must rate their content or face prosecution."

Who's a publisher? We are. You are, if you post a reply to this thread. If the system gets set up as scheduled, you'll be forced to add a rating to every post you make, every email you send, every webpage you publish - or face prosecution. After all, you're protecting the children.

Or more precisely, the adults. Australia wants to ban the sex categories from its entire population - Germany wants to ban the hate speech categories. Just like at the movies, it's easier if you attack higher up in the distribution chain.

Rather than making it illegal to download Mein Kampf or purchase it from Amazon.com, it's much easier if you make a law that applies to the telecommunications providers. They're big companies. The bigger they are, the less likely they are to buck the laws - and since there aren't many of them, they're easy to monitor for compliance. Civil disobedience isn't in their vocabulary: give them a law, and they'll just implement it. Such as censoring out all material with a certain rating at the backbone.

Oh, it's true that it won't be 100% effective. Banned documents will still be smuggled across the electronic borders. But for most people, in most circumstances, it will be plenty effective. If you like your internet unlabeled, it's just about too late.

by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy

(More tomorrow on the Munich conference and recent events in the development of the Global Rating System.)

davidu writes "MP3.com has a really cool interview with Joseph Mesterhazy, the creator of the LCDAT Linux-based MP3 player. If you haven't seen it, it is extremely cool. The interview also talks about how open standards make projects like this easier. This is is one of the first, not vapor, stereo quality, MP3 players out there, and it runs Linux! " I wonder how many of us have duct taped perl scripts together for our MP3 playing.

dayeight wrote in to tell us about Linux Mandrake's new DiskDrake GUI Disk Partitioner and resizer GTK Based replacement for FIPS or Partition Magic- it looks like a promising for the free world.