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CNet offers an interesting comparison between Napster to Go and iTunes. For $15 a month, Napster to Go offers over 1 million songs (access to which lasts as long as subscription is valid), while songs for iPod must be purchased and last 'forever' (but it takes about $10,000 to fill an iPod). Is Napster to Go the future of digital music distribution? Would moving to an all-you-can-eat model hurt iPod business and balance the power among authors, studios, hardware makers and consumers?" It might take $10,000 to fill an iPod with songs downloaded from iTunes or with music converted to MP3 from newly purchased CDs, but there's a lot of downloadable and legit free music out there, not to mention Griffin's RadioShark.

SeaDour writes "CNET News has an interesting perspective on the changing face of technology on campus. These days, students are showing more interest in the tech perks that campuses have to offer, and universities are taking notice. Duke University, for example, just gave away free iPods to each of their 1,650 incoming freshman. Penn State offers subsidized access to Napster 2.0 for all students, and many other schools are now considering similar programs with Rhapsody and Cdigix. Perhaps the best offering is wireless internet access, which 90% of campuses now offer in some form. Are we seeing the day when college students make their school of choice not based solely on academics or athletics, but also on tech freebies like these?"

southpolesammy writes "The Register reports that six more US Universities and colleges have agreed to enter into protection schemes with the RIAA. In short, several institutions have signed deals with the RIAA's lapdog, the Napster music service, to 'goad these schools toward becoming music brokers'. The underlying threat of being sued by the RIAA if they don't pay them off is almost certainly the driving force behind their acceptance of this scheme. And of course, there's the ever-present gag order they'll probably enforce on these new universities as well. Great business model guys. Way to engender yourselves to your biggest customer base."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft today officially announced the public availability of Windows Media Player 10 Technical Beta. These screenshots reveal how Microsoft is integrating music service subscriptions such as Napster and video service subscription from CinemaNow. Is Microsoft trying to start competing with iTunes with this new music service integration?"

amichalo writes "Napster just went multi-continent with the surprise announcement of a Napster UK on-line music service. From the website, singles at 1.09 British pounds, albums start at 9.95 pounds. Availability for other European nations not available. Apple has previously announced they would be entering the European market by the end of the year with rumors of singles priced at 1.49 Euro."

frankkubiak asks: "I recently bought the new iPod with 40GB. I understand the arguments of the record industry, that I should buy the music I want to hear. Alright. So I don't want to get MP3 files by file-sharing. But here is my problem: I live outside the U.S., in Germany to be exact. iTunes only offers service to those inside the U.S. (see this related Slashdot article). I don't want a CD, vinyl record, tape or minidisc. I simply want to listen to the music. Even if I decide to buy a legacy audio CD, it is often copy-protected and won't load in my PC. So, strictly speaking, it is not even an audio-CD. Heise keeps a database of those un-CDs (German language. English speakers can use this fish-translated page). It sounds incredible, but even after hours of research on the web, I don't see a legal way to use this device with new songs. The only way I see to use this device is to buy a CD, and if I can't rip it, I'll have to [break the law and] download the MP3-file via file-sharing. I believe there are more people like me out there who want to listen to their music, without feeling guilty. Why is there no one meeting this demand? How does Slashdot feel about this?" Before you mention Napster, let's note that it has similar restrictions (see the "International Considerations" section). So where can non-U.S. internet users go to download the legal MP3s that they want?

frankkubiak asks: "I recently bought the new iPod with 40GB. I understand the arguments of the record industry, that I should buy the music I want to hear. Alright. So I don't want to get MP3 files by file-sharing. But here is my problem: I live outside the U.S., in Germany to be exact. iTunes only offers service to those inside the U.S. (see this related Slashdot article). I don't want a CD, vinyl record, tape or minidisc. I simply want to listen to the music. Even if I decide to buy a legacy audio CD, it is often copy-protected and won't load in my PC. So, strictly speaking, it is not even an audio-CD. Heise keeps a database of those un-CDs (German language. English speakers can use this fish-translated page). It sounds incredible, but even after hours of research on the web, I don't see a legal way to use this device with new songs. The only way I see to use this device is to buy a CD, and if I can't rip it, I'll have to [break the law and] download the MP3-file via file-sharing. I believe there are more people like me out there who want to listen to their music, without feeling guilty. Why is there no one meeting this demand? How does Slashdot feel about this?" Before you mention Napster, let's note that it has similar restrictions (see the "International Considerations" section). So where can non-U.S. internet users go to download the legal MP3s that they want?

Dteyn writes "I heard on the radio today that Wal-Mart will soon be opening up an online music store to compete with the likes of Apple's iTunes and Napster. According to the radio newsguy, it's expected to be officially announced as early as next week. Looks like this 'digital music' thing is starting to catch on with the bigwigs. Finally."

Anonymous Superhero writes "From Wired magazine Napster 2.0 has a sleek design and makes exploring new music a pleasure. The most nagging problem? The confusing licensing issues. A review by Katie Dean." I haven't tried it yet - still using the iTunes store.

G4Outcast writes "According to this CNN Money article, Napster will be offering pre-paid cards costing $14.85 at several retail locations. I guess the iTunes gift certificate and allowance idea is catching on."

intheory writes "As it states on the site, The Cat is Almost Back. Napster, following a singificant delay, beleagured by legal and ethical rhetoric, reappears as a pay-to-play service. With some similarities to Apple's iTunes, will Napster regain its place as the premiere music distribution service? Additionally, the man behind the magic, Shawn Fanning, receives a thoughtful write up." I'm pretty wary of the new Napster, as the only thing it seems to share with its predecessor is the name.

SnowWolf2003 writes "It looks like a couple of people are trying to find a way to distribute music legally over P2P networks. The latest is Mercora (with more information here). Also Napster 2.0 is due for release sometime next week. Can any of these Windows alternatives to Apple's iTunes compete though with the inherent restrictions built into the wma format? Note MusicMatch has just launched a windows based service with fewer restrictions equivalent to the iTunes policy. More importantly, can these P2P services lure enough people away from restriction free Kazaa to make themselves successful, where P2P networks rely on a large user base?"

Jedi Paramedic writes "Boston.com has an interesting story about the rise and fall of everyone's favorite file-swapping service. Also the subject of a new book by Joseph Menn, the story goes into great detail about the unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning and his reluctance to admit that his uncle, who in the end masterminded little more than the lining of his own pockets, had taken advantage of him. From getting screwed in the original 70/30 split with his uncle to his uncle's refusal to loosen his iron grip on the company even at the expense of its very being, the article (and the book) go a long way in chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, and crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry. An interesting and well-written read."

Joey Patterson writes "Looks like the story of Napster founder Shawn Fanning is headed to the small screen. CNET News.com reports that Fanning has signed a deal with MTV to turn his life story into a movie, which will focus on his personal saga during Napster's rise and fall. There's no word yet on who the cast will be (although Fanning may play himself), but Alex Winter (who played Bill in the "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" movies) will write (and possibly direct) the film."

Joey Patterson writes "CNN Money reports that Napster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy." Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been stopped they can all sleep much better.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "A beta tester for the recently released subscription version of Napster has anonymously posted his impressions of the new service. He finds it remarkably similar to the old one, both good '... browsing through a real person's music collection, sending them messages and recommending them new music' and bad '... broken tracks, cancelled transfers and a complete inability to stream or preview tracks.' The service allows 50 tracks a month, but there was little decent content to fill those slots. Messages to other beta testers found mixed reactions among fellow users. Still, the writer holds out some optimism for Napster's chances."

*ZiggyP0P* writes "Napster has finally released a preview/teaser of their new business model. Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use. Quite interesting the part about their own file format..."

*ZiggyP0P* writes "Napster has finally released a preview/teaser of their new business model. Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use. Quite interesting the part about their own file format..."

D Anderson n'Swaart writes: "As the BBC reports in this article, Napster is set to return shortly, as a subscription-based sharing service, a concept facing a less-than-rosy future. The report gives a brief history of Napster, and the current state of the various lawsuits that were brought against it. The briefs: Napster is going to have to fork over a total of around $36M USD, $10M of which is downpayment on future royalties." And whatAnotherAolUser writes that the company "agreed to pay $26 million to settle a copyright lawsuit with songwriters and music publishers, and to make royalty payments to the writers and publishers once it started a fee-based service." Guess it depends where you start counting.

Anonymous Coward was the first one to write with this tidbit: "Napster is now refusing connections to anyone not running its 2.0 beta 10.3 client. Of course, this stops anyone from using a client not published by Napster. The error message that the Napster server gives you is: "::: server / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com ::: error / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com " The Napster website says: "Beta 10.3 incorporates new file identification technology", and nothing else regarding the matter that I can find. I know most people are using OpenNap and other file sharing services now, but I still like to connect to Napster to get lesser-known (and not banned yet) songs."

Anonymous Coward was the first one to write with this tidbit: "Napster is now refusing connections to anyone not running its 2.0 beta 10.3 client. Of course, this stops anyone from using a client not published by Napster. The error message that the Napster server gives you is: "::: server / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com ::: error / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com " The Napster website says: "Beta 10.3 incorporates new file identification technology", and nothing else regarding the matter that I can find. I know most people are using OpenNap and other file sharing services now, but I still like to connect to Napster to get lesser-known (and not banned yet) songs."

Anonymous Coward was the first one to write with this tidbit: "Napster is now refusing connections to anyone not running its 2.0 beta 10.3 client. Of course, this stops anyone from using a client not published by Napster. The error message that the Napster server gives you is: "::: server / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com ::: error / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com " The Napster website says: "Beta 10.3 incorporates new file identification technology", and nothing else regarding the matter that I can find. I know most people are using OpenNap and other file sharing services now, but I still like to connect to Napster to get lesser-known (and not banned yet) songs."

Anonymous Coward was the first one to write with this tidbit: "Napster is now refusing connections to anyone not running its 2.0 beta 10.3 client. Of course, this stops anyone from using a client not published by Napster. The error message that the Napster server gives you is: "::: server / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com ::: error / You must upgrade your client at http://www.napster.com " The Napster website says: "Beta 10.3 incorporates new file identification technology", and nothing else regarding the matter that I can find. I know most people are using OpenNap and other file sharing services now, but I still like to connect to Napster to get lesser-known (and not banned yet) songs."

A reader:"The BBC News site has a story about Napster signing a deal with 150 record companies to distrube their music over the net." Interesting to note this piece though that the usage has totally dropped off the face of the earth.

mtstump writes "Wired is running a story stating that Napster has signed deals with three of the five major recording companies in an effort to make Napster legit." It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought. Course I still don't see the benefit for us. No doubt we'll see more of these deals as napster becomes less relevant and decentralized networks grow in popularity.

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."

mongolian_beef writes "Edel Music AG, an independent European music label, has agreed to distribute music over Napster Inc.'s popular song-swapping service, marking the Internet upstart's biggest deal since it agreed to create a legal version of its service with Bertelsmann AG. Under the terms of the deal, Napster will make songs by popular Edel artists such as Craig David and 2Step available to those of its 50 million registered users who agree to sign up as members for its new fee-based song-swapping service. Financial terms weren't disclosed."

An amazing number of readers submitted links to various sources discussing that napster will now be subscription based. This follows an agreement with BMG. As Hemos said before, conceptually this is fine, but it'll be interesting to see how its implemented, and what they charge.

ttol writes "Take a look at this speech Shawn Fanning did to the Congressional Committee on October 9th. He explains how Napster came about, what his visions of the digital future will be, and how everyone can be involved. It's a good read."

ttol writes "Take a look at this speech Shawn Fanning did to the Congressional Committee on October 9th. He explains how Napster came about, what his visions of the digital future will be, and how everyone can be involved. It's a good read."

burris writes "Salon's Damien Cave writes "Forget Napster and Gnutella. Jim McCoy's Mojo Nation is the coolest file trading service on the net." This OpenSource distributed filesystem uses digital cash technology to create a barter economy for idle disk space, bandwidth, and CPU. Now you can get paid for sharing your computer."

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.)

A few words from HP on the Linux-based but Linux-unfriendly print server (read gently, and be thankful for small blessings); happy news from the "the NSA secretly controls PGP and its creator" front; more detail on the sordid, awful things that the MPAA used to say about VCRs, and an online Linux magazine for those who like read in 5 languages at once. (phew!)

Sheesh! All the guy ever promised was pretty good security! :) zenith744 writes: " Now available here is PGP v6.5.8, which appearently "...corrects a security-related bug with Additional Decryption Keys (ADKs) that may allow sophisticated attackers to add unauthorized ADK key IDs to the unhashed areas of PGP public keys...". This bug was previously brought to light about a week ago and reported on slashdot. A little more security, a little less stress. A happily balanced equation."

And an unnamed reader points to a story on Network Fusion about Zimmerman's response to the hubbub. Paraphrased: "It was a bug. We're embarrassed about it. Now it's fixed." In an imperfect world, you gotta admit that PGP is one of the bright spots.

It's always "wait a minute," isn't it? Tjisana M. Lewis, Product Manager, Emerging Products World-wide Business Management at Hewlett Packard (and who hopefully doesn't have many middle names to remember) wrote in response to the article on Slashdot recently about HP's new print server which runs Linux internally but does not support LDP client printing: "I've read some of the responses and (understandably) there is much speculation on WHY we did not support LPD client printing in the product's first release." She sent the following response, which strongly hints at better Linux support in the future for this product.

"The JetDirect 4000 Print Appliance can send print jobs to any LPD enabled destination whether such destination is a Linux box, JetDirect print server, or any other vendor's print server. Currently the JetDirect 4000 does not receive LPD print jobs, however in a few months, this [and other features] will be available in a free firmware upgrade.

As a vendor with a Linux based product, HP is extremely committed to supporting the Open Source community. We support developers in the Samba team including Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell by contracting with both VA Linux and Linuxcare to develop features for the print appliance. These features are part of the Samba project and will be available to everyone under the GPL. An example is NT Printing functionality that will enable the use of native NT tools and features such as "point and print." Point and print enables automatic downloading of a print driver to a Windows client when the client adds a printer.

Furthermore, HP, in working with SAMBA, adds testing resources during the development process of the release thereby increasing the final quality of the release."

Care for some salt with your wound, Mr. Valenti? Master of Kode Fu writes: "The New York Times has an article quoting MPAA President Jack Valenti saying this: "[it] is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone." He wasn't talking about DeCSS, Napster, Scour, FreeNet or Gnutella -- he said it in 1982 and he was talking about VCRs. He didn't see that VCRs would eventually become as important an income stream for films as box-office sales. Will the MPAA (and similarly, the RIAA) learn from historical precedent, or is file sharing over the 'Net a completely different case with different circumstances?"

Isn't it funny how the fight to prevent consumer taping went away when the companies involved realized that what VCRs really represented was a whole new way to make money? Hmmm. Extend, project, extrapolate ... I smell money here, too. Don't they?

Contribute to the death of excuses! The excuses not to at least try Free software keep dwindling, and it's nicer than strangling dodo birds. Remember when "But there aren't any books!" was a valid complaint about Linux? How about "I can hire MSCEs and know they have at least some knowledge of the systems they purport to administrate -- but there aren't Linux equivalents!"? That one's gone too, for better or for worse. And now, if your boss (or spouse) grouses that there aren't any free, multilingual Linux journals online, not only do you know their excuse barrel is near empty, but you can point them to ... well, let Atif Ghaffar explain:

"LinuxFocus (LF) is a multilingual magazine about the operating system Linux.

LF is managed and produced by Linux volunteers, fans and developers. There is no subscription necessary to read LF, it is freely available on the web with mirrors all over the world.

Lf is published almost every two months. The master website for Linuxfocus is at http://www.linuxfocus.org

Articles this month include pieces on Rebol, a presentation application for X Window, distro reviews, a book review and more. Get it while it's Free!

Nir Arbel asks: "After two years of using Visual C++, I've decided to try Borland's C++ Builder 5 for a small pet project of mine, to see if I wanted to make the switch. After putting BC5 through it's paces, I was ready to switch camp. Eventually though, as my project got big enough, it seemed BCB5 could no longer link my project. Searching for info, I ran into several descriptions of this exact same problem with the ultimate conclusion that the linker couldn't handle more than 32 megs of debug information. I'm reluctant to believe that this development environment is useless for large projects. Does anyone know about this problem and possible solutions to it?"

Welcome to the Slashback. This time around you'll find bits about the speed of light, project Monterey, and coverage of the recently departed (alas!) San Jose LWCE. And word from Microsoft about porting Office apps to Linux gets my thumbs up -- your thumb direction may vary. [Updated by timothy with a special bonus story, 22 Aug. 0:30 GMT]

Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).

NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"

A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.

Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."

Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."

Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."

For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.

The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.

Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.

Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."

For anyone not following the story thus far, C# is here, courtesy of Microsoft, Anders Hejlsberg, and a raftload of other languages from which its features are derived (or added to). Napster's Nir Arbel here dissects what C# means to programmers used to other languages, and explains a bit about where it fits into the grand scheme of things. Be warned: Nir takes a pragmatic, low-dogma approach which may be unsettling to some readers. Please watch your head.

To Begin at the Ending

I'm a big fan of programming languages, possibly more than of actual programming. Every once in a while I hear about this new language that is just "brilliant", that "does things differently" and that "takes a whole different approach to programming". I typically then take the necessary time off my regularly scheduled C++ programming, learn enough about the language to get excited about the new one, but not enough to actually do anything useful with it, rave about it for a couple days, and then quietly and without protest go back to my C++ programming.

And so, when I learned of Microsoft's new up-and-comer, C# (pronunciation: whatever), I became duly excited and went forth to learn as much about it as possible.

Last things first: On paper, C# is very interesting. It does very little that's truly new and innovative, but it does do several things differently, and through this paper I hope to explore and present at least some the more important differences between C# and its obvious influences: C++ and Java. So, skipping the obligatory Slashdot "speaking favorably of Microsoft" apology, let's talk about C#, the language.

How is it like Java/C++?

In the look & feel department, C# feels very much like C++. More so than even Java. While Java syntax borrows much of the C++ syntax, some of the corresponding language constructs have a slightly different form of use. While this is hardly a complaint, it's interesting to note that the designers of C# went a little further in making it look like C++. This is good for the same reason it was good with Java. Being a professional C++ programmer, I use C++ way more than any other language. Eiffel, for instance, has a much cleaner syntax than either C++, C# or Java, and at face value it does seem as though one should bear with new syntax if this is going to lead to cleaner, more easily understandable code, but for an old dog like myself, not having to remember so much new syntax when switching to another language is nothing short of a blessing.

C# borrows much from Java, a debt which Microsoft has not acknowledged, and possibly never will. Just like Java, C# does automatic garbage-collection. This means that, unlike with C and C++, there is no need to track the use of created objects, since the program automatically knows when objects are no longer in use and eventually destroys them. This makes working with large object groups considerably simpler, although, there have been a few instances where I was faced with a programming problem where the solution depended on objects *not* being automatically destroyed, as they were supposed to exist separate from the main object hierarchy and would take care of their own destruction when the time was right. Stroustrup's vision of automatic garbage-collection for C++ sees automatic garbage-collection as an optional feature, which might make the language more complicated to use, but would allow better performance and increased design flexibility.

One interesting way in which C# deals with the performance issues involved with automatic garbage collection is that of allowing you to define classes whose objects always copy by value, instead of the default copy by reference, which means there is no need to garbage- collect such objects. This is done, confusingly enough, by defining classes instead as structs. This is very different from C++ structs, which are defined in exactly the same way; C++ structs are just classes where members are public by default, instead of privately. Another idea that was lifted directly off Java, and one which turned out to be very controversial is that of multiple inheritance. In what seemed like a step backwards, Java did not allow you to define classes that inherit from one than one class. Java did let you define "interfaces", which work like C++ abstract classes, but were semantically clearer: an interface is a functional contract that declares one or more methods. A class can choose to "sign" such a contract by inheriting it, and providing a working implementation for every method that the interface declares. In Java, you can inherit as many interfaces as you want. The rationale to all this being that multiply inheriting more than one class raises too many possible problems, most notably that of clashing implementations and repeated inheritance. On a side note, the cleanest separation between interface and implementation that I know of is that of Sather, where classes can provide either implementation or interface, but not both.

So what else is new?

One new feature that I mentioned already was that of copy-by-value objects. This seemingly small improvement is a potentially huge performance saver! With C++, one is regularly tempted to describe the simplest constructs as classes, and in so doing make it safer and simpler to use them. For example, a phone directory program might define a phone record as a class, and would maintain one PhoneRecord object per actual record. In Java, each and every one of those objects would be garbage collected! Now, Java uses mark-and-sweep in order to garbage collect. The way that this is done is this: the JVM starts with the program's main object, and starts recursively descending through references to other objects. Every object that is traversed is marked as referenced. When this is done, all of the objects that aren't marked are destroyed. In the phone book program, especially if there are thousands and thousands of phone records, this can drastically increase the time that it takes the JVM to go through the marking phase. In C#, you'd be able to avoid all this by defining PhoneRecord as a struct instead of a class.

Another thing that C# does better than Java is the type-unification system. In Java, all classes are implicitly descendents of the Object class, which supplies several extremely useful services. C# classes are also all eventual descendents of the object class, but unlike Java, primitives such as integers, booleans and floating-point types are considered to be regular classes. Java supplies classes that correspond with primitive types, and mapping an object-value to a primitive value and vice versa is very simple, but C# makes it that much simpler by eliminating that duplicity.

Personally, I found C# support of events to be a very exciting new feature! Whereas an object method operates the object in a certain way, object events let the object notify the outside world of particular changes in its state.. A Socket class, for instance, might define a ReadPossible event or a data object might release a DataChanged event. Other objects may then subscribe for such an event so that they'd be able to do some work when the event is released. Events may very well be considered to be "reverse- functions", in the sense that rather than operate the object, they allow the object to operate the outside world, and in my programming experience, events are almost as important as methods themselves.

While you could always implement events in C by taking pointers to functions, or optionally in C++ and Java by taking objects that subclass a corresponding handler type, C# allows you to define class events as regular members. Such event members can be defined to take any delegate type. Delegates are the C# version of function pointers. Whereas a C function pointer consists of nothing but a callable address, a delegate is an object reference as well as a method reference. Delegates are callable, and when called, operate the stored method upon the stored object reference. This design, which may seem less object-oriented than the Java approach of defining a handler interface and having subscribers subclass the interface and instantiate a subscriber, is considerably more straightforward and makes using events nearly as simple as invoking object methods.

Events are one example of how C# takes a popular use of pre-existing object-oriented mechanisms and makes it explicit by giving it a name and logic of its own. Properties are another example, even though they're not as much of a labor-saver as events are. It is very commonplace in C++ to provide "getters" and "setters" for private data members, in order to provide controlled access to them. C# treats such "protected" data members as Properties, and the declaration syntax of properties is such that you have to provide getter and setter functions for each property. In fact, properties do not have to correspond to real data members at all! They may very well be the product of some calculation or other operation.

And then, by far the ugliest, most redundant and hard-to-understand language construct in C# is the Attribute. Attributes are objects of certain types that can be attached to any variable or static language construct. At run-time, practically anything can be queried for the value of attributes attached to it. This sounds like the sort of hack someone would work into a language ten years after it's been in use and there was no other way to do something important without breaking backwards compatibility. Attributes are C#'s version of Java reflection, but with none of the elegance and appropriateness. In general, and especially in light of C#'s overall design, the Attributes feature is out of place, and inexcusable.

What is it missing? Being an unborn language, there is much that C# does not yet promise to deliver, and for which it can't be criticized. First of all, there is no telling just how well it would perform. Java is, in many ways, the better language but one of the prime reasons it's been avoided is its relatively slow performance, especially compared to corresponding C and C++ implementations. It's not yet clear whether C# programs would need the equivalent of a Java Virtual Machine or whether they could be compiled directly into standalone executables, which might positively affect C#'s performance and possibly even set it as a viable successor to C++, at the very least on Windows. While there is much talk of C# being cross-platform, it is unclear just how feasible implementing C# on non- windows platforms is going to be. The required .NET framework consists of much that is, at least at the moment, Windows specific, and C# relies heavily on Microsoft's Component Object Model. All things considered, setting up a proper environment for C# on other platforms should prove to be a massive undertaking, that perhaps none other than Microsoft can afford.

Furthermore, while there is mention of a provided system library, it's not clear what services such a library would provide. C++ provides a standard library that allows basic OS operations, the immensely useful STL and a powerful stream I/O system with basic implementation for files and memory buffers. The Java core libraries go much further by providing classes for anything from data structures, to communications, to GUI. It is yet to be seen how C#'s system library would fare in comparison.

One thing that's sure to be missing from C#, and very sadly at that is any form of genericity. Genericity, such as it is implemented in C++, allows one to define "types with holes". Such types, when supplied with the missing information, are used to create new types on the spot, and are therefore considered to be "templates" for types. A good example of a useful type template is C++'s list, which can be used to create linked-lists for values of any type. Unlike a C linked-list that takes in pointers to void or a Java linked list that takes Object references, a list instantiated from the C++ list template is type-safe. That is to say, it would only be able to take in values of the type for which it was instantiated. While it is true that inheritance and genericity are often interchangeable, having both makes for a safer, possibly faster development platform.

The designers of C# have admitted the usefulness of genericity, but also confessed that C# is not going to support genericity on first release. More interestingly, they are unhappy with C++'s approach to genericity, which is based entirely on templates. It would be interesting to see what approach C# would take towards the concept, seeing as templates are pretty much synonymous with genericity at the moment.

To sum it up

Many now refer to C# as a Java-wannabe, and there is much evidence to support this notion. C# doesn't only borrow a number of ideas from Java. It seems to follow up on Java's sense of clean design. It's a somewhat sad observation then that C#, purely as a language, not only provides a fraction of the innovation and daring that Java did, it also falls just a little behind Java where cleanliness and simplicity are concerned. However, if you're someone like myself, who uses Windows as their primary development platform and needs to use C or C++ because he cannot afford the overhead that Java incurs, it's possible that C# would turn out to be a very beneficial compromise.

Baldrson and other folks as well write: "Dan Brumleve is at it again with Brown Orifice. In this episode, our fearless grey hat opens a security hole in the Web's foundation that makes Napster look positively tame by comparison. Be careful with this, kids. It turns your Netscape Web browser into a Web server that can serve up your entire file system to any other Web browser."

d4 asks: "I've seen a list of RIAA members, but what I'd really like to know is: what record companies are not RIAA members? Many smaller labels are subsidiaries of larger companies, and it's not always easy to tell where affiliations lie. So if I'm going to boycott the RIAA, from whom can I still buy music?" If there are any of you out there preparing a protest for the RIAA's treatment of Napster, then you may want to read this one.

The reaction to the turning off of Napster's servers has been fast and furious. Whether you feel that unauthorized copying of music is a basic human right, the moral equivalent of "sharing" for yourself merchandise from Tower Records' loading dock, or somewhere in the fuzzy gray area between, you should at least know how the decision to turn off Napster for the moment has focused the various public reactions. Read on to see just a sampling of the numerous stories throughout the media related to this story.

Point Of Order, Point of Clarification Justin Maurer writes:

"it's come to my attention that a lot of news organisations, and napster themselves, have been twisting words around in this whole napster case. if you'll bear with me for a second, i can try and clear up a little bit of it.

everyone (including napster) keeps saying that the judge ordered napster to be shut down. this is not the case. the judge ordered them to make sure no one is trading copyrighted material, and the result is that napster is telling everyone they've been ordered to shut down. if you'd like, i can provide sources for this information, though i'm going to bed now :)"

[Note from timothy: Here is a link to the Preliminary Injunction Brief (pdf file) from the RIAA site; given the way Napster works, though, it does seem like its grant would have effect of shutting all but the chatroom, doesn't it?]

Are Bassists Smarter Than Drummers? JHancock17 reminds anyone who hasn't to read Courtney Love's speech as reprinted by Salon a while back, and res0 points to this ABC News interview with Chuck D. in which the P.E. frontman continues his eloquent tirade against the music industry as a whole. But Mr. D and Ms. Love have been famous outspoken in favor of Napster and electronic music exchange for a while: Now those stalwarts are joined by another big name. srcosmo writes "Radiohead have become the first British band to condemn the injunction against Napster. Their bassist, Colin Greenwood, showed enthusiasm for the availability of Napsterized live recordings, saying "We have just finished a tour, we played in Barcelona, the next day the entire performance was up on Napster and three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." An interesting change from the Metallica look at things- hopefully more artists will follow their lead."

Follow Your Conscience: What You Can Do cLn writes "Napster has been shut down and irc mp3 channels are being flooded by desperate mp3 junkies. What they don't know is that there are ways around this small problem. Napigator is a windows program that'll help the napster client connect to other servers other than the few it trys. Tripnosis works alot like napster, but you can download other files (zip, arj, rar, mov, avi, mpeg, jpg, gif, ect...), you can also search through online users files using the sites search engine."

And DrEldarion points to "http://www.kripto.org/blocks/, "an anonymous distributed file transfer system designed for people with permanent 'always on' Internet connections;" good explanation on the site itself of how it differs from other such systems.

Mad Ross (Ross McKillop) writes "Everyone now knows of the recent decision about napster's future. This is unfortunate and many still agree unreasonable but I am attempting to gather all the open source clients and alternative servers in one place and create an organised network of replacement napster servers... If anyone is interested in helping by...

• contributing a client
• helping as a server operator
• running a napster server
• etc...

or just want's to be kept informed about what is happening then please please eMail napsterlives@madross.co.uk or visit madross.co.uk -- there should be napster related pages there by the time you read this.

What Else You Can Do: Alert The Media (Mavens) battery841 writes "In light of Napster getting an injunction against it by the courts, someone decided to register riaaboycott.org and setup a petition. You sign the petition, and once it's gotten enough signatures, it's going to be sent to numerous sources, including Napster and the RIAA." And as CmdrTaco posted the other day, there are boycotts in the air.

Another Angle On The Big Picture: Danse writes "Salon is running an article with reactions from all sorts of people connected to the music industry, Napster, Napster alternatives, etc. It's pretty interesting reading. Everything from the arrogance of Jack Valenti to the apparent cluelessness of Erwin Drake to the insightfulness of Glenn Reynolds to the amazingly short (obviously not written by Lars) comment by Metallica. To sum things up, the industry thinks this is a big win and that they now have a chance to offer consumers music downloads on their own terms. This displays their current lack of understanding of the real problems that users are seeking to remedy with Napster and the other music/file trading options. Napster supporters and alternatives feel that it's a loss for free speech, but that in the long run it will only hurt the record industry as people move to litigation-proof solutions."

Spasemunki writes: "This link showed up on Ars Technica the other day. It's an article on Brill's Content on the sociological impact of a society where the younger generation has all the technical know-how, and parents are left to seek the advice of their kids on how to keep things running. It discusses patterns in computer use and knowledge, and the rising economic and social power of the young and computer saavy. Includes some words from Shawn Fanning of Napster fame."

Nightspore writes: "David Boies, the lawyer recently seen cleaning Microsoft's clock for the DOJ is going to bat for Napster, and he is bringing a curious bit of law with him. It seems that if one uses enforcement of a copyright in an anti-competitive fashion -- which Napster says it has documents proving members of the RIAA cartel have done -- you lose your ability to legally enforce that copyright . Oops! More here." You can read the actual brief in pdf format as well. Boies lays out all his arguments on page three...

Nightspore writes: "David Boies, the lawyer recently seen cleaning Microsoft's clock for the DOJ is going to bat for Napster, and he is bringing a curious bit of law with him. It seems that if one uses enforcement of a copyright in an anti-competitive fashion -- which Napster says it has documents proving members of the RIAA cartel have done -- you lose your ability to legally enforce that copyright . Oops! More here." You can read the actual brief in pdf format as well. Boies lays out all his arguments on page three...

ll0yD asks: "There is an article at Security Focus blowing the horn on network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks. The main reason they are working on this is to combat Napster and other related "evil" network programs. I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, but this looks like it is going a little too far. If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online? Besides isn't file sharing what the Internet is about? What are your views?" This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas, be it via Napster, or a browser. Now I'm worried that some fool will start making noises about banning FTP.

W00dDuCK noted that Napster has banned the 300,000 users that Metallica reported were pirating copyrighted music. Moments later, all 300,000 created new accounts. This isn't over yet.

Here you go: Philip Greenspun talks of life, ArsDigita, fame, Oracle, photography, and that sort of thing in respone to the fascinating questions you submitted earlier this week. Enjoy!

How do you expect this degree to be worth anything
(Score:5, Interesting)
by slashdot-terminal

People spend thousands on a university education because they think it's a benefit and will lead them to a good job. Are there any employeers that have or would be willing to accept a graduate of your university. Do you think the numbers will increase?

Phillip:

We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum. We even suggest one on our site: visit education.oracle.com and learn to be an Oracle DBA.

That said, the Baby Boomers are beginning to retire. Employers can't afford to exclude people who are qualified to work. Someone who can show a potential employer some running systems that he or she has built, a transcript with good grades from ArsDigita University and recommendations from a few of our PhD CS nerd instructors should not have any trouble getting a job.

Travels with Samantha
(Score:5, Interesting)
by X

I remember reading Travels with Samantha when it first came out on the world wide web (some of my first real reading on the web). What struck me about it, aside from the fact that I enjoyed reading it, was how much of yourself was laid bare in the story. Publicly exposing oneself like this is something that celeberties do all the time, but it was (particularly at that time) a rare thing for Joe private citizen to do (although certainly within your nature ;-).

I'm wondering you can describe what happened as a result of exposing so much of yourself online. I remember reading the comments on the story, and there were certainly a wide range of responses, but I was wondering if you noticed any larger consequences?

Phillip:

Travels with Samantha isn't about self-exposure; it comes from the same motivation that leads people to open-source software: the desire to help people build on what one has learned or done. If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web :-)

Publishing the book online has had some huge consequences for my life, but not the ones that I would have expected. For example, I got a large number of questions about photography. I thought it would be more useful to people if I codified my knowledge in a set of Web pages (http://photo.net/photo). The codified content generated yet more questions so I implemented a database-backed discussion forum for the site. Voila! I turned into the publisher of a 50,000-member, million hit/day online community. Trying to serve the changing needs of the community led me to build the ArsDigita Community System (ACS). Trying to keep up with the companies that wanted systems built on top of the ACS led me start ArsDigita Corporation. Profits accumulated by the efforts of our 100 developers enabled me to start ArsDigita University.

12 hrs/day * 6 days/week == severe burnout?
(Score:5, Insightful)
by ToastyKen

When I read about Ars Digita University, the first thing that came to mind was what an extreme amount 12 hrs/day, 6 days/week, on A SINGLE SUBJECT is. I mean, there do exist people who can take that much work, but don't you think a large percentage of your student population would simply burn out?

I go to a major university, there's no way I put in 12 hrs a day of work, and I'm still already stressed out. And that's with multiple subjects so I can take my mind off of one and switch gears occassionally.

Do you have any plans to counter potential burnout?

Phillip:

A typical MIT student takes 9 courses in 9 months. ArsDigita University teaches 9 course in 9 months. Thus the overall pace should be similar to what has proven to be successful at MIT. Taking multiple subjects simultaneously has some advantages but it also requires students to be good at managing their time. Even within traditional universities there has always been debate about whether it wouldn't be better to focus on only one course at a time.

The Ars Digita University is cool, but...
(Score:5, Interesting)
by hey!

the real problem I see is that there are people with a clue, and people with degrees, and there's not necessarily much of a correlation positive or negative between the two. Ideally, to improve the situation so clueful people get access to the important ideas of CS and that employers get some better idea that when they hire a degreed engineer they're actually getting something worth a premium.

It seems to me that CS degree work should be opened to more people who would advance by demonstrating the ability to do real work integrating important theoretical CS ideas with real world problems. Yet the very format really excludes a great deal of people, especially those who have to work to support themselves.

Does the Ars Digita program offer any real advance in CS degree program quality or accessibility to people who would benefit themselves and society the most?

Phillip:

Imagine Jane Humanist. She went to college in 1985 and wanted to touch human lives. In 1985, computers were generally only found in specialized locations and had little impact on the average person. So Jane very sensibly elected to major in government or psychology or history. Fifteen years later, it turns out that computers are ubiquitous and that the most efficient way to touch a lot of human lives may very well be to build some sort of information system. ArsDigita University is intended to offer Jane Humanist a second chance so that her impact on the world won't be limited by her choice of college major back in the mid-1980s.

As for the "great deal of people" who can't travel to Cambridge, must work to support themselves, don't have high test scores, etc., we will support them via online lectures, course materials, and collaboration tools. That said, I doubt that the average distance learner will have enough motivation and discipline to come up to the MIT/Stanford level.

Question
(Score:5, Interesting)
by doonesbury

The idea that you propose is controversial, and potentially disturbing to the entrenched university/degree program - especially considering the billions that these programs earn based on the concept that the "magic paper" only available through degreed universities is the only qualification for intellegence and competence.

A) Where would you like to see this program move towards, in relation to universities;

B) Do you plan on a "pay" version, for people who can actually afford to pay?

C) The qualifications (and I took a *real* good look at them, I really want to go!) are a bit unusual - in that they require SAT scores.

I miss by 50 points, but isn't that exactly the attitude that you're trying to escape - that you need a standardized test to determine intellegence, that you need cash to determine eligibility? Or am I reading too much into the program?

Phillip:

With our pitiful $1 million/year annual budget we're not trying to shake a $15 billion organization like Harvard University to its foundations. Our relationship with other universities is pretty simple. We try to use their curricular materials where appropriate. We offer our curricular materials to anyone who wants them under an open content license.

A "pay" version? No of course not! The university is more to benefit the instructors (see http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/professionalism) than the students. We are privileged that they choose to hang out with us. Teaching is its own reward and is part of what we think of as the good life. (Note the "part of"; I personally wouldn't want to teach full-time.)

Our qualifications unusual in requiring SAT scores? Every college requires SAT scores! That's because they are a great indicator of someone's willingness and ability to sit down, do homework, take tests, etc. Also we're lazy and don't want to spend a week interviewing each student.

Are any Open Source databases production ready?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by DuBois

Philip:

I've read "Philip and Alex's Guide..." and hoped to implement your kind of website on my own server. But then I noted that Oracle requires thousands of dollars of licensing fees.

Have you used any of the Open Source databases like MySQL or Postgres enough to recommend one of them for a light-usage site?

Or perhaps none of the Open Source databases are yet ready for production use?

Phillip:

I talk about this a bit in http://photo.net/wtr/aolserver/introduction-2.html.

The bottom line is that for people who care about data integrity, concurrency, and 24x7 redundant operation, there really is not an adequate substitute for commercial RDBMes (even the commercial object database companies haven't been able to make any headway against the heavy-duty RDBMS systems).

Will the "University" be open or biased?
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Wee

I certainly mean no denigration by this, but will this "University" be universal or will it teach only concepts that use Ars Digita's preferred architecture: AOLServer, Tcl and Oracle? For example, you mention that 40 hits per second exposes the limits of Perl/CGI/DBI (which might be a questionable statement in and of itself), but I've worked on teams that built stuff which very nicely handles hundreds of hits per second using Java servlets and MySQL (for only one example). Will this sort of thing be taught in addition to the stuff you guys prefer?

I just can't help but think that the University will be biased in some way. Certainly, it's biased towards rote memorization in applicants (a rather inflammatory earlier statement alluded that a score of at least 1400 on the SATs was a requirement for being bright), but will the technological course material follow? I know that there's an Ivy League ethos that surrounds many people and institutions, and it would be a shame if that same sentiment ruled out "less bright" technologies as well as people in this new University. (And for the record: I work with extremely smart people -- some of whom never graduated college -- who use none of what Ars Digita uses, so I may be a little biased myself... ;-)

Another thought just hit me: Couldn't this University been seen as a thinly veiled way to promote Ars Digita's technological choices? Honestly, I don't know many people that actually use Tcl or AOLServer to do much, especially in a production environment. If future gradutes of your program are well-schooled in using those products, wouldn't they necessarily think of these technologies first when doing future work? Won't they be biased? So can't this just be seen as an "Tcl/AOLServer Mill"?

Again, I don't mean any slight or to seem like a troll, but this whole thing sounds to me like it'll be as well-rounded as any MCSE learning might be.

Phillip:

Sorry to disappoint you but we won't be teaching Java or MySQL or Perl. We'll be teaching the standard computer science curriculum that has evolved over 25 years at schools like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and MIT. We would certainly not teach AOLserver or Tcl because a student who couldn't learn these things in a day by him or herself would never make it through SICP, Discrete Math, or Algorithms!

(By the way, the ArsDigita Community System is a set of data models and workflow that has nothing to do with AOLserver or Tcl; for the presentation layer you can run Apache if you like and we've announced a 100% Java version.)

Opinion vs. Fact
(Score:5, Interesting)
by ryanr

I read "Travels with Samantha" not too long ago when I ran across a link to it. As a result, I poked around photo.net a bit, and ended up buying a paper copy of "Phil and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing." Great book, recommended. Even though it's on the web, it reads better on paper, the book is nicely put together, nice heavy paper, and the photos look good (all stuff Phil will tell you, too. :) )

My question is this:

In most of your writing, you often put some statement out there as fact, when it is actually an opinion. In many cases, I can spot it as such, and just roll my eyes a bit if I happen to disagree. Are you aware that you do this, do you worry about it, or do you expect your readers to spot it and take it as an opinion? Or are you a typcial college professor whose opinion IS fact, and won't be told otherwise? :)

The reason I ask is that I do a little writing myself, and I find it a unnerving to put something in print that becomes more-or-less unchangeable. I.e. I just worry about being "wrong" either because I am plain wrong, or wasn't clear in my statements.

Phillip:

When I first started writing journal papers (back in the early 1980s), I had a great editor named Curt Roads who crossed out all the occurrences of "In my opinion" and "I believe" from my writing. He said "It is obviously your opinion because your name is on the article and it is obvious that you believe this or you wouldn't be saying it." So I tend to shy away from weasel and waffle words.

Why tight coupling to a RDBMS?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by kslee

First of all, thanks a lot for Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing and introducing Edward Tufte's excellect books.

My Question is:

What's the merit of tightly-coupled-to-Oracle architecture of acs(ars digita community system) as a web application platform? ZOPE is in my mind as the not-tightly-coupled-to-any-RDBMS web applicaton platform?

Some people came to ZOPE because they can not afford an Oracle(in my case, the prefernce of python to tcl played a lot).

Or any comment on the web application servers/platforms which does not have the honor of being commented upon in your web tools review is apprecitated GREATLY!

Phillip:

You're welcome on the Tufte recommendation. His books are certainly easier to install on one's shelf than Oracle is on a Linux box :-)

There are two separate issues raised by your question, both of them worthwhile. The first is "If you're going to use an RDBMS, why not make your code more portable and abstract instead of hard-coding in Oracle dependencies?" If you read http://www.arsdigita.com/asj/professionalism you'll see that we value innovation over market share. If one has limited time and resources, it is better to worry about making the application great rather than "Does it run with Informix 9.05 or SQL Server 7?" We're not in love with Oracle but it is adequate for what we want to do and therefore we don't spend time and effort on portability.

The second issue is "Why not an object database?" If one's source of persistence were an object database, that would change all kinds of assumptions about Web development style. For one thing it would make object-oriented languages such as Java much more useful. Sadly, however, the object database folks haven't successfully tackled some important problems that the RDBMS handles very well: concurrency and isolation of application program from database.

So of course ZOPE is an honest effort and a great contribution. But most companies are forced by practicalities to be very RDBMS-centric and I think that makes our suite of software more useful. Also, we attack a much higher level of the application stack than the ZOPE guys. See http://www.photo.net/building-community/infrastructure.adp for a draft book chapter that I've written that talks about this issue.

Techno-social considerations
(Score:5, Interesting)
by jellicle

The technical challenge of building an online community is less than half of the total work involved. Social considerations are tremendously important, and a change in one line of code can totally change the flavor and viability of a community. It is my suspicion that ArsDigita has not yet run into communities as challenging as Slashdot, that is, places where some percentage of the population is dedicated to destroying the place through denial of service attacks of various forms. The challenge is to enforce some level of responsibility without eliminating anonymity, without being called a censor, without tracking users like a stalker... Few if any online communities can be said to have gotten it entirely "right", but somehow the majority of real-world communities manage to have civil discourse at a reasonable level. This is really a sort of sociology problem - and hardly an easy one - which is instantiated in computer code. How would you solve these problems? Or, more precisely, how would you start to learn how to solve these problems?

And no, "Trial and error." is not an acceptable answer. :)

Phillip:

Actually at photo.net we've run into many of the same problems, but probably not as severe as at Slashdot. First, a couple of things that make photo.net simpler than Slashdot. We are a PURPOSEFUL community. Everyone at photo.net wants to become a better photographer and therefore that implies a shared purpose of user-to-user education. Second, we are anchored by a lot of magnet content that I wrote, e.g., http://photo.net/photo/tutorial/

Most people who don't agree with at least part of my way of looking at photography education will turn away from the site before becoming involved in a discussion.

What makes Web development tougher than other kinds of software engineering that I've done is the constant challenge of idiosyncratic humans. For example, in the 1980s I did a lot of computational geometry, graphics algorithms, and computer-aided design programming. The algorithms could be hard to understand but once coded they would work properly forever without modification. The reason that it was possible to completely solve the problem was that the input to these algorithms was machine-readable and fixed in format. In Web development, however, user interfaces and annotation that work for 50 simultaneous users invariably break down when 50,000 users pile in (a friend of mine runs cnn.com and told me that they once got nearly 1 million comments on an article! The ArsDigita Community System would present these in a flat list on a single page... not very modem-friendly!).

What are you shooting now?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by HerrNewton

I know this will likely get pushed aside by more net oriented questions, but what are you shooting for a body, lenses and film these days? I know, different tools for different occassions, but what is your most common setup?

Phillip:

These days I'm mostly chained to my desk at ArsDigita and hence I don't do a lot of work around Boston. ArsDigita now has offices in Tokyo, Pasadena, Berkeley, Austin, Atlanta, Washington DC, London, and Munich. This plus the occasional speaking engagement means that I travel a bit and fill in the spare hours with sightseeing and street photography. My favorite tool is a Fuji 617 panoramic camera, loaded with Ilford 3200 black and white film. This enables handheld photography and the production of a 6x17cm negative, which enlarges nicely to cover the walls in our 100,000 square feet of office space worldwide. I also do a lot of work with a Canon 50/1.4 lens, usually attached to an EOS-3 body loaded with Fuji NPH film (ISO 400 color negs with a subdued palette). I was just in Florida and couldn't resist buying a $10,000 600/4 IS lens to take pictures of birds. Check out

http://photo.net/photo/pcd4101/index-fpx.html

and

http://photo.net/photo/pcd4715/index-fpx.html

for examples of new work (unlinked from anywhere so far, exclusive to Slashdot readers!).

Bottom line is that a monkey can take good pictures. Talent is cheap. Time is precious. If you put a lot of time and hard work into photography, you'll have good pictures. If you are a burnt-out nerd grabbing snapshots in spare moments you'll have... the stuff above.

------------------

I added these myself because I thought they were worthwhile.

Do *you* ever suffer from burnout?
(Score:4, Interesting)
by timgriffin

Given that your interests/tallents are so many and varied, how have you found the last several years of corporate CEO-dom? Inevitably there isn't time to do everything. What do you miss? What's most rewarding? What's most irksome about your responsibilities? What does the future hold for you?

Phillip:

Do you know the scene in King Lear where he meets Edgar disguised as a pitiful guy wandering the heath in rags? And Lear asks "What happened to him? Does he have daughters?"

I used to think that assholes became business people but now I realize that the causation works in the other direction. Now when I find a deranged person shouting at someone, I ask "Oh, does he have employees?"

If you have high standards and you grow fast you will inevitably find yourself having to tell people how they're not meeting your standards. Oftentimes I'm struck by how much better a job someone at ArsDigita has done than I would have done. But I only get to spend 15 seconds enjoying that feeling before moving on to attack a problem. Being a manager means focussing on stuff that isn't going well. It made me crazy enough that I was really happy to hire Allen Shaheen, one of the founders of Cambridge Technology Partners, to take over as CEO. Now I'm Chairman and will concentrate on technology (what problems to attack and how to attack them), education (how do we turn smart people into great Web service developers), evangelism (sadly I'm still the best spokesperson for ArsDigita), and company culture (no we won't hire people just to grow; yes your boss will be able to do your job; yes we will hold programmers accountable for the overall quality of the Web service; yes, dammit, we ARE going to spend a fortune on beach and ski houses where programmers can build modules, write documentation, journal papers, and book chapters).

Your outlook on industry partnerships?
by petervessenes

Phil, I own what is, to my knowledge, the third ACS based company in the world, ybos.net. We have a fairly aggressive growth plan, (more aggressive than furfly's for example), and I have a number of questions:

What's Ars' outlook on industry partnerships going forward? We're too small still to do the projects you guys want, (million+/year) and I don't think we'll be there for at least a year or two. I believe that making partnerships, and building relationsips with companies like ybos is important for you as you go forward: more alternative service providers gain you mindshare in the same way that giving away a year of free training at Ars U does.

How do you feel about ACS/Pg? Using Oracle is a major blow to doing smaller projects, obviously. Also, I know the state of Postgres two years ago, so I don't blame you for the switch to Oracle from Illustra, but do you have intention to backport to a more open database architecture, or 'bless' Ben Adida and co's work on the ACS/Pg? I think what appeals to me about ACS/Pg is not Postgres (rather obviously), but the more open nature of the development -- Ybos has begun releasing useful ACS modules to the public, and enhancing some slow-moving Ars ones, and it's a medium-level frustration that they'll never get rolled into your toolkit, or that we have to develop side by side. (for example, bryan che kindly lent us his data model early for the events module, but we developed about half a module under his data model before you released the newer module, and we scratched it and started over.) This leads to my final question:

Do you have thoughts on the relative openness of the ACS development? Would you consider an 'inner circle' development model that would let confirmed developers check code in and out of the development releases? I think that you'd see some significant benefits. I ask about this rather than a 'true' open source system because I'm betting you'd say "no way" to an aggressively open model. I probably would, too.

Meanwhile, I hope you're well! Congratulations on the recent funding. I hope we're not far off.

Phillip:

Ybos isn't the third ACS-based company! Just about every European country seems to have a collection of monster developers who've started an ACS-based services company. There are some great guys in Brighton, England that I'd kill to hire, for example. But I digress...

We believe so much in partnerships that we our very first MBA was Cesar Brea, a Bain refugee, our VP of Business Development. We could not have gotten Siemens without Boston Consulting Group. So we make partnerships all the time but we just don't bother to announce them with press releases and stuff (probably we should).

As far as ACS/PostgreSQL goes, we've given the project a free server and definitely support it. I offered money to the PostgreSQL group to pay for them to implement an "Oracle syntax SQL parser" (so that all kinds of Oracle-based apps could run on Postgres, not just ACS).

On the cathedral/bazaar split let me say that we've taken in lots of good ideas from the community. It hasn't been as formal as I'd have liked so we're looking to hire a whole bunch more dedicated toolkit developers who will have time to look at CVS diffs from outside developers, etc. We're not quite ready to go for the public CVS tree because we change our core structure too much. Maybe in ACS 5.0 we'll be able to do that (this fall?).

Data Modeling Tools
by Tassach

Dr. Greenspun,

Given that the ArsDigita Community System is so heavily database-driven, I was wondering what tools you use for data modeling and schema management.

What is your opinion of modeling tools like Sybase's PowerDesigner and Platinum's ERwin? What kinds of tools do you think are necessary to facilitate the development of highly portable, vender independent database designs? Finally, what is your opinion of UML and to what extent does ArsDigita use it?

Phillip:

First, my brother Harry is a real doctor so I'm forced to go by "Philip Greenspun, merely a PhD". The tool that we use for data modeling and schema management is ... GNU Emacs! E-R diagrams are basically useless once a data model gets beyond a certain size. And for smart people they aren't all that useful for small and medium-sized data models. UML would be useful if one could build entire Web services from the UML spec. This is kind of thing that we teach our students at MIT: come up with a machine-readable specification language and write a program to generate the programs that run the site. See http://photo.net/teaching/psets/ps4/ps4.adp for an example.

Bottom line is that Emacs + clever programmer will always crush a fancy commercial tool + weak programmer.

-----------------

Other interview notes: We're still waiting for answers from RMS and SCO. Next Monday we'll be seeking questions for Douglas Adams, and Thursday we'll need questions for Metallica about their tiff with Napster. If you know someone you'd like to see interviewed here (*and* you have contact info for them), please send e-mail to roblimo@slashdot.org. (Don't bother telling me we ought to get Stephen Hawking; he's already our single most-requested potential guest. I've e-mailed his graduate assistant with an interview request but have not yet gotten a response.)

- Robin "roblimo" Miller

Philip Greenspun is (in no particular order) a photographer, writer, software engineer, Web designer, philosopher, and entrepreneur, and is now the "main man" behind the free Ars Digita University program. Years ago, a gentleman with Philip's wide range of interests and skills was called a "Rennaisance Man." Today -- especially in Philip's case -- the phrase "Internet Man" may be more apt, but the idea is the same. Post questions for Philip below; we'll select 10 of the highest-moderated and send them to him Tuesday afternoon (US EDT). His answers will appear, Open Source-like, "When they're ready."

General interview notes/updates: Richard Stallman has been putting plenty of thought into his answers; they should be along within the next day or two. The SCO Presidents have promised to have their answers to us in time for publication Thursday. The band Metallica has agreed, through their publicist, to do an interview about Napster and its effect on the music industry as soon as they finish the music video they're working on now, hopefully later this week. Next week's scheduled interview guest already knows the answer: 42. Yes, we're talking about Douglas Adams. So don't panic, okay?

- Robin "roblimo" Miller

schtum writes: "As reported on NME: Public Enemy's Chuck D has become the first high-profile artist to come out in support of under-fire website and MP3 software provider Napster You can read Mr. D's original statement here."

In the first part of Slashdot's 'Making Music with Linux' series, we discussed the possibilities of using Linux as an audio production operating system. While we lamented the lack of a fully-functional audio suite for Linux, we saw the silver lining in the cloud of patience, and witnessed a great number of free sound tools that were well on their way to greatness. In this installment, we talk a little more about high-end audio mastering, low-end sound transport, and using Linux as a tool for sound synthesis. Part II of a series.

Burning a CD under Linux is super-easy, and there are quite a few programs that make it possible under Linux. X-CD-Roast is a popular tool, and is used constantly by Linux enthusiasts to burn their own multi-session content onto a compact disc. The problem is that there is still no Linux equivalent for the huge multi-track mixer you'll find at professional recording studios. If you're hoping to mix down tracks and perform studio-quality takes and 'bounces' of your work, you're going to need an expensive chunk of professional digital audio hardware. Once you've got your finished master, you'll have no problem making as many copies as you want using your Linux machine. Until we have a real-time mixdown utility, the waiting game wins again.

The world of low-bandwidth sound transport is wide open on the Linux platform, except for the glaring exception of not being able to play Windows Media Player sound files on your machine. Although the 'media darling' of sound transport is the mp3 file format, there's no denying the fact that mp3 provides solid sound quality and a small file footprint. Mp3 still isn't the answer to all of our prayers, however. No matter what anyone tells you, mp3 is not CD-quality sound, and tends to boost the mid-range in most tunes.

When you're living with a low-bandwidth target, the sound you're streaming is secondary in importance to stretching that stream over a maximum number of clients with the least amount of lag. RealPlayer suffers from the same mid-range band pass issues as mp3, but in the grand scheme of things, you're a lot more likely to encounter RealPlayer as an option when you're surfing. Producing RealPlayer content is easy to do and easy to host, but the downside is that it's not free. RealProducer will run you $149.95 from RealNetworks.

Joseph Ottinger, Linux-savvy musician, shares his thoughts on streaming audio. "I choose mp3 because of the high quality and decent compression. Real's stuff is nice because it's streaming, but even on a fast connection, that stuff sounds like it's ground up. Microsoft's streaming format is worse, lacking even more of the fundamental sound's depth and clarity. The problem with mp3 is Napster. Napster makes it easy to send and find mp3's. A lot of people trade though, so people rip stuff at low quality just to get their numbers up and their bandwidth down."

Csound is a wonderfully portable and versatile sound synthesis package written entirely in C. Csound uses two files to work its magic; a score file that basically acts as a timed-event trigger file, and an orchestra file to interpret what voices it should use to play the score. This is a classical approach to sound synthesis, and can be used to either generate a sound file or, if your system is fast enough, to send the output directly to a DAC on your system's soundcard. If you like, you can even use a standard MIDI file to act as the score file. Csound has about a bazillion extensions, and nifty gadgets that use it.

For those interested in using their Linux machine as a powerful tool for creating original instruments and sounds, they'll find a friend in Cecilia, a wonderful sound synthesis tool that sits right on top of Csound, without you having to get your hands dirty. Cecilia provides real-time signal processing on sound files, live input, or can work as a software synthesizer on its own. If you're in love with real-time resonance or envelope filters, Cecilia lets you configure the software synth to the limit.

Next time, we discuss Linux sound hardware and support, and we're going acronym-diving! Find out what OSS and ALSA are, and why they've got something to do with those big speakers you bought. We'll also navigate the treacherous waters of musical notation with Linux. If you know of any fantastic audio production programs, please let us know! See you next time...

Note: This is part one of a two-part series.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed by Congress and signed into law more than a year ago, but its true impact is only beginning to be felt. Corporatism squared off brazenly against the geeks, and handily won Round One. If you're wondering where your Napster really went, read more below.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is an especially devious title for one of the most significant pieces of Internet legislation yet passed. If you're looking for insight into how corporatism and politics work together to control software and technology -- and to potentially stifle free speech and individual choice -- you can't do better. Nor will you find a more textbook-perfect example of dubious, perhaps even unconstitutional, Internet law.

This is how the struggle over who owns ideas, software and intellectual property on the Internet will be waged; Round One in the battle that is pitting corporatism against the geeks. They won.

The DMCA -- largely the fruit of massive lobbying by the entertainment industry, including companies like Time Warner, Disney and other giants of recording and movie industry -- was passed quietly 16 months ago by a normally acrimonious Congress, and immediately signed by the President. Despite the law's profound and far-reaching implications, Clinton's signing of the measure drew little media attention, online or off, and only in the last few months has its impact begun to be felt.

Central to the law is a clause making it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods through the use of software or hardware. Without that power, argued the lobbyists for record labels, traditional publishers and film studios, their industries would be run out of business by the newly empowered Net generation. This is a generation, mostly young, who've discovered that they could create their own culture on the Net, and get the music they wanted rather than pick only from the choices preselected for them by the music industry. And for free, no less. Thousands of artists who wouldn't have gotten through the record industry's artist-selection machine suddenly had channels to distribute their work and find new audiences. Music software is a powerful example of how the Net gave individuals -- especially ones far removed from corporate models of culture and creativity -- a chance to be seen and heard. And it gave music lovers a chance to hear them as well.

And although the law passed more than a year ago (despite opposition to DMCA by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other online free-speech activists, the Act's proponents and their lawyers took their time strategizing about exactly how to enforce and implement it.

This year, the gloves came off -- and suddenly people at colleges all over the country are wondering what happened to their Napster sites. Despite what many schools are telling their students -- often that downloading music simply takes up too much bandwidth -- the real reason for their actions is the DCMA.

Pointedly high-profile lawsuits have been filed recently, as the entertainment industry takes the lead in the war against free culture and the spread of forums for artists to disseminate their work -- at least artists the industry doesn't control. The industry has obviously done its homework, studying how software really works and how information moves, and is using the Digital Millennial Copyright Act as its primary weapon against infringement by people using the Net and the Web.

As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA is already beginning to redefine entertainment on the Net, and regain control of popular culture, as corporatists move against free music and movie users. As someone who's been writing about First Amendment issues for years, it's hard to imagine a piece of legislation with greater implications for free speech as well as corporate control of intellectual content. This legislation seems to have anti-trust implications as well: how could any law more actively discourage creativity and competition?

If there is a silver lining in the use of the DMCA to dominate entertainment, it's that day by day, the political issues become clearer. Even though many open source advocates see themselves as technologically centered, rather than politically, the DMCA pits the free software movement, squarely against the commercialist threat to the free nature of the Internet. The corporatists grasp what many young programmers don't: Open source is a powerful political idea, and it's antithetical to the way many modern corporations have always worked.

"The anti-circumvention clauses fundamentally change the balance of copyright," Alex Fowlier of the EFF told USA Today's Bruce Haring earlier this week. "Now we're not just talking about rights to the work, but about tying it to the system it is displayed on, or plays on, or is distributed by. That's one level deeper into control than copyright has been associated with." Tying the distribution, display or performance of a work to a system "affects the users in ways we can't even imagine," says Fowler. "It really hampers the future growth of the Internet." It doesn't do much for the present either.

One reason free music sources proliferated so rapidly was that they often piggy-backed on educational and other sites where music seekers congregated. College students could download music on their schools' sites, in part because the schools believed they were simply neutral, non-liable carriers of content. Since there was no Internet law governing content on Web sites, nobody knew if that was true or not. But it certainly isn't true anymore.

The music industry and its lawyers understood that colleges and universities are powerful channels for commercial music, places where artists, bands and even musical genres are discovered and become popular. They realized they didn't have to shut down every free music site on the Net -- those on instant messaging services like ICQ or AIM, for example -- in order to sharply curb the spread of free music. They could use the DMCA as a way to focus on a smaller number of sites, and on universities and colleges. For an industry that garnered $15 billion in revenues last year, the cost of that focused effort is chump change.

Rather than targeting music distributors or downloaders, they lobbied successfully to get a law passed that made it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods in software and hardware. Music industry lawyers then began notifying colleges and universities that they might be in violation of federal copyright protection laws if they tolerated the existence of Napster and other means of music dissemination. Free music users, accustomed for years to downloading what they wanted, were caught unawares.

The DMCA went a step further, in a legally ingenious way. The law decrees that Internet service providers won't be liable for copyright infringement by their users if the providers remove offending material once they're made aware of it. It's that provision that gains entertainment companies so many powerful new allies in their war against "pirates" -- recruiting, in effect, all the institutions and sites that allow content redistribution, and turning them into culture cops. If they block free music, they're off the hook legally. If they don't, they're liable.

Some colleges seem to think they have a far greater stake in avoiding lawsuits than they do in confronting the real issues involved -- like promoting free expression and diversity in culture. And college students are selective in political issues. There is, for example, a broad-based anti-sweatshop movement on many U.S. campuses, but no equivalently passionate and nationally-organized movement to keep culture free.

(Personal note: As an author who writes online and on paper, I am well aware of the complexity of intellectual content and copyright issues. Writing online, especially for this Web site, means relinquishing reprint, royalty and subsidiary rights that used to provide revenue to writers and artists. The work of me and other writers here and elsewhere on the Web is widely distributed, linked and even printed in paper form without permission or payment. But I've also come to believe that the free (open source, if you like) distribution of content -- even opinions -- offers creators new opportunities: broader audiences, greater impact, road-tested ideas, thus eventually, perhaps even more income.)

While the sweatshop issue (students accuse colleges as well as fashion retailers of buying merchandise produced by sweatshop labor) is perfectly valid, one could argue that the effort by corporatism to attack information software and control entertainment is ultimately of equal importance.

Before the DMCA, for example, a university -- or even a commercial Web site -- could look the other way as people presented, distributed and downloaded music. The legal issue was left between the record company and the so-called "pirates." But in recent months the DMCA has sparked legal actions like these:

• Jon Johansen, a 16-year-old Norwegian student who allegedly wrote software allowing DVDs to be played on Linux-based computers, was arrested at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA claimed the code illegally circumvented DVD copy protection, and sent cease-and-desist orders to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Web sites, including this one, that had allegedly posted the source code or linked to it. The MPAA filed lawsuits against several sites, as well as charges against Johansen and other software developers, and announced it would pursue other offenders.

• RealNetworks obtained an injunction against a portion of software created by Streambox, designed to allow users to capture or record streaming media sent via Real's copy-protected format.

• The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Napster, which allows music seekers to trade song files directly from machine to machine without having to post them on the Net. Following the suit, Napster was removed from scores of college and other Web sites.

Tomorrow: The political issue is as simple as it is significant. Do individuals have the right to define their own cultural and entertainment experiences? Or must they depend on content and products sold by a handful of corporations?

Anonymous Coward writes "In a letter, the author of a Gnome-based Napster clone was pressured to remove distribution of the program due to the fear that source availability would make the Napster servers less secure [if] gnap is not ceased." UPDATE by RM: Ryan Dahl, gnap author, has spoken with Napster, says they've come to a happy understanding, and has removed the "letter from Napster" (and his response to it) from his page. He also tells us that he and Napster are working together on an article for tomorrow, which we eagerly await.