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Man you're one to talk, show some balls and post using your ID. Scared little bitches like you make me sick.

Have you ever even looked at SDL? Probably not, allow me to enlighten you. Of course it's not a drop-in replacement for DirectX, I think your friends at MS might have some reservations about that. SDL provides a DirectX like layer for Linux that makes it much easier to port DirectX code to Linux. Here, get yourself a clue dumb ass. How exactly did you think Loki ported DirectX games like SOF to Linux?

And for what it's worth, my post was regarding NATIVE PORTS for Linux, not improving the current emulator situation with WINE and WineX. So while you're waiting for your nuts to grow, you might want to take a remedial reading class.

A few examples:

1. No worry of obnoxious code, as it's FS/OSS.
2. No worry of BSA-auditing and multimillion dollar extortion schemes.
3. No licensing headaches.
4. Infinite scaleability per each individually bought copy (as in, you can install an infinite number of copies with one purchased [or downloaded] CD).
5. Due to #4, ever-increasing savings as the number of computers onto which you install the software grows.
6. Assurance that the product will not die off simply because a company goes out of business, as it is FS/OSS. Any worthy project will be taken up by others if it's original developers move on.
7. Related to #6, ability to develop/implement your own features for your specific needs.

On another note regarding Oracle, it is basically slow crap. The executable alone is 18MB, so it naturally has poor performance; specialized database-systems will outperform it. Btw, data assurance from Oracle doesn't come for free. It costs quite a bit. And for that extra money you spend on it, it'd be better just spending that money doing an audit of FS/OSS code to insure that it won't lose data, and creating backup systems. Using journaling file systems like ReiserFS and XFS is also useful.

Enterprise != Personal systems.

Completely correct. The benefits of using FS/OSS at the enterprise level are even greater. Refer to the many research papers and discussions of companies saving millions by using GNU/Linux over Windows-2000/XP/2003. The MITRE study comes to mind: http://www.egovos.org/pdf/dodfoss.pdf This is a study funded by the government to get an objective evaluation; not some crackpot study funded by MS to make them look better.

Your $300 sale from Gateway doesn't mean shit. A $3M sale, does. They don't give a shit about you. Deal with it. Firstly, this is irrelevant to the rest of the discussion. This was simply a personal digression of mine. The point was that you can get excellent technical support for free within a community of intelligent members. If my $300 doesn't mean shit to Gateway, then they and every other OEM should stop their false advertising of "tech-support" -- because all they're doing is reading from a cookbook which we could have found online. Btw, I don't how many customers Gateway has. Let's say they have 1-million home-user customers, and each customer pays $100 for tech-support (these are obviously conservative numbers). That amounts to $100 million in tech support paid to Gateway by home-users. They damn well better care about the quality of tech support they're giving to home-users.

Lets see some open source clusters

Where have you been the last five years? Some of the world's most powerful supercomputers are Beowulf clusters, using GNU/Linux. See an O'Reilly article for an overview. In particular, GNU/Linux Beowulf clusters are being used for:

• weather forecasting
• high-energy physics problems (e.g., singularities)
• creating lifelike animations & computer-generated graphics (e.g., Matrix, Titanic, Toy Story)
• data mining
• simulation of semiconductors
• CAD systems for developing
• sequencing of the human genome

Yep, this FS/OSS stuff is really useless. It's only made the movie industry more money then from any other movie (see Titanic), assisted in the sequencing of the human genome, and assisted in the prediction of weather patterns, potentially saving lives.

What about SAN support?

Granted, I can not find any FS/OSS implementations at the moment, but there is commercial support available for GNU/Linux:

• href=http://www.globe-it.com/Products/linuxsansolu tion.htm
• ht

The behavior in question isn't "bundling", it's "tying". And there is a notable and telling litigation history against M$ in the area of anti-competitive tying of non-OS products to its OS. (See this nifty summary of the Caldera v. Microsoft case of 1996-2000.)

(There are those that argue that the "non-OS product"--Windows 3.1--is actually an OS component. Those folks are, of course, wrong. At the time of MS-DOS 5.0 and Digital Research's DR-DOS 6, Windows was no more a mandatory OS component than a 3 1/2" floppy drive was.)

So, Microsoft has made grabs at non-OS-space with its OS products. Yeah, I know, they settled without admission of guilt. The fact they settled is the moral equivalent of an admission of guilt, legal weasels notwithstanding.

Windows 3.1 was tied, for no valid technical reason, to Microsoft's MS-DOS. This solely to weaken competitive OS products. Sound familiar?

In fact, what you're saying is that EVERY MS product (from Flight Simulator to Age of Mythology) is tied to Windows because most are Windows exclusive. That is not what the courts had in mind.

The reason most M$ applications seem to be "Windows exclusive" is because they can't be run natively on other platforms. That's a valid technical reason for OS-exclusivity. However, if someone (e.g., the WINE Project) successfully engineers an OS or a compatibility layer which is API-compatible with Windows, and therefore makes the technical reasons for OS-exclusivity go away... then... M$ has no say in the matter. If the MS products can be run on non-M$ OSs, then M$ has no legal standing to prohibit that. M$ cannot legally mandate Windows in order to run M$ applications. THAT is illegal tying. And THAT IS what the courts had in mind.

One specific thing you may want to try with a firewall is blocking packets to 224.0.0.251. I've been using MacSniffer to monitor the traffic on my own home lan to see what I might need to do security-wise and noticed packets going to this address periodically. After some searching, I found that this is probably Rendezvous activity. See this article.

Its a very interesting discussion, however, could you be a little bit nicer next time (and don't make us work harder than we really have to -- lazy by nature, aren't we?) and make it into a link.

In retrospect, it was glue, using glue, talking to glue, using glue, talking to real data. Cute.

Jeff was intrigued, and told me a day or two later that he'd discovered that his skunkworks team already had a web services API in the works. But he says that without my presentation he "might have done something stupid like shutting the project down.

Read about the rest in Tim's weblog post.

You mean as in "Does a bear in the woods?"

Not to diminish the valiant efforts of the sparsely populated team of Moz SVG developers, but the Moz SVG viewer tends to crash more and lag in level of standards implement when compared to Adobe's SVG viewer.

Keep looking here to find out.

I've used an Audigy ex platinum yadda yadda yadda 2 on a Win XP box, and although maybe a little overpriced I was happy with its performance. It wouldn't fit into a 'pro' studio but for anything up to that point it's nice..

On the issue of Linux Latency there are many resources around the web helping you knock it down even further. A good start is Oreilly.

Take a look at this article for how to do it with mozilla. Unfortunately, it requires a restart before any changes are made.

Opera has support for user stylesheets that can be toggled on and off with a keypress though.

I wonder if they would consider selling Pringles [oreillynet.com] instead of fries (for the to go orders).

Unless they're using open source software.

Caldera alone was responsible for the DR DOS/Microsoft lawsuit, not SCO.

I was referring to Caldera. The decision to sue IBM is a Caldera decision, as Caldera is responsible for SCO. Caldera is the SCO group. The Caldera website is the same as SCO. From their website;

Caldera, Inc. was founded in 1994 by Ransom Love and Bryan Sparks. In 1998, Caldera Systems, Inc. was created to develop Linux-based business solutions. In 2001, Caldera Systems, Inc. acquired the assets of the Server Software Division and Professional Services Division of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (SCO), forming a new company, Caldera International, Inc. In 2002, Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group

The settlement had everything to do with guilt, not image

The Caldera suit against Microsoft never went to trial -- it was settled. So the question of Microsoft's guilt had yet to be decided by a jury in a trial. Sure they looked guilty, that's my point - Microsoft looked like a corporate thug. For a background on the case see this (some of the links are dead, but the salient points are there). I doubt if there are any "smoking gun" emails with IBM as there was with Microsoft.

They are suing IBM for the same amount that they sued Microsoft for - 1 billion dollars.

This is true in the industrial world but not in developing countries like Senegal, where you can hire laborers for dollars a day. The labor would actually be the cheapest part of the overall cost.

Think about it ... 500 km with a pole every 25 m, that's 10000 poles, each one has to be put up, the cable strung, etc. etc.

I was talking about 100 km, not 500 km, because the cost benefit of wired lines is greater at shorter distances. Also, I'm not sure where you got the value of 25 m. I'd say the poles could be much farther apart than that. Also, wooden poles are dirt-cheap in West Africa, because the forests are in-country (Ghana actually exports timber), so you wouldn't need to pay the costs of importing and international shipping (unlike the Wi-Fi electronics).

Of course, at a distance of 500 km, wires are normally put up using large metal towers at great distances apart. They'd cost more but would be more permanent. Regardless, I don't think either of us has enough data on this subject to do a proper comparison.

Laptops run on solar power.

No, they can be charged with solar power, but they cannot run on solar power. I know this because I actually tried it when I lived in Ghana. I brought a 60 cm by 30 cm portable solar panel with me to Ghana, thinking that I'd be able to power my laptop with it, but it was useless. Even in direct sunlight with no clouds in the sky, it took two days to charge the thing, and as you know, laptops can only run about 3 hours max on a full charge. That meant I could only use my laptop for 3 hours every two days! And of course, during the rainy season (a span of about four months), I couldn't use it at all because there was no sun. An even bigger issue is price. The small solar panel I brought with me cost $500. Are you suggesting we add $500 to the cost of each computer that these villagers buy? No, solar power just isn't feasible in the situation we're talking about. As for routers, even if they draw very little current, they'd still go dead at night if they were on solar power. I suppose you could add batteries (and thus several hundred dollars more to the cost), but I doubt they could store enough juice to last through a four-month rainy season.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that computers and APs don't need electricity, and the only issue is cost. Are you still suggesting that we hook up these rural villages to Wi-Fi before we give them electricity? Try going for a week without electricity sometime, and I think you'll find light bulbs will become much more important to you than Internet access. ;) (Seriously, I went without electrical power for long periods at a time while living in Ghana, and Internet access was not high on my list! A nice cool fan was much more valuable than a computer in those conditions.)

The bottom line is, you can do so much more with electricity than with Wi-Fi. Electricity gives you lights, fans, refrigerators, radios, TVs, and other appliances that have a much deeper impact on the quality of life than being able to surf the net. For instance, in the small rural town where I lived, the hospital used electricity to chill polio vaccines that would otherwise be ruined in the tropical heat. Meanwhile, in the center of town, women used an electric mill to grind cornmeal so they could prepare meals for their families. Are you honestly saying that Wi-Fi access and VoIP are more important than these things?

Although there are Wi-Fi APs that include routers, many don't.

Actually, I meant APs, not APs with routers. (I use the term "router" for both types.)

At each base station, the WiFi devices may be connected to any of the available routing and switching equipment that can be used with a normal TCP/IP network. So, each base station can tap into the data stream, and do whatever they like with it. Wi-Fi doesn't care how many "connections" there are, it's all TCP/IP packets.

You're saying that a Wi-Fi AP can support an arbitrary number of simultaneous connections, but this just isn't true. You cannot increase the number of connections to an AP without bound. Every time a computer connects to an AP and transmits packets, the AP has to allocate resources (RAM and CPU) to forward those packets. And because there is a finite amount of RAM and clock cycles in the AP, there is a finite number of simultaneous connections.

I did some more checking on this, and I have yet to find an off-the-shelf router that can handle more than 256 connections, and most can only handle 64. Try these links:
Envara
CheetahWireless
And this guy says his AP can't handle more than 7 (!) connections.

• ...There's a common misperception that, because there are no printing and shipping charges, ebooks should be less expensive than print books. Yet, these functions account for only about 15 percent of a book's cost...
  

• 
  [links:]
  DocBook - DocBook reference online (free)
  Interview with Jon Udell about Safari - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/news/udell_0301.ht ml
  Open books - http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ free and out of print books online.

I tried out safari, but for myself, I was quite happy sticking with the CD Bookshelves. For the cost of a couple O'Reilly books you get ~6 on CD-ROM (plus one in print as well) in HTML format. Slap that puppy on your webserver and you can access it wherever you go. I'd usually sell the print copy on ebay to recoup some of the cost.

My biggest gripe with safari was the layout and the speed vs. CD Bookshelves. The CD Bookshelves are as fast as your computer and the pages take up the full browser screen - none of those menus to get in your way.

In a fit of nearsighted vision, I got 10 Visor Deluxes, 10 Xircom 802.11b Springport modules, and 10 3Com Audreys from liquidation sales last year. I had the idea to put the Visors into ad-hoc mode, and dot an area with these nodes to provide a mesh network. But so what? With the Springport slot occupied, I can't find any peripherals, like a camera, to give the nodes anything worth contributing to the network once they're on it. The Audreys look even more limited. The mesh is up, but what can I use it for?

There was an interesting presentation at last year's OSCON by someone who developed something like what you describe in Perl/Tk for a quadriplegic friend.

at O'Reilly, mdadm
and, I'd recommend Enterprise Volume Management System rather than LVM ( Logical Volume Manager ), simply because LVM's seems to be being dropped as
redundant ( ironic, that : ) as EVMS gets more effective, and I don't want the conversion-work from LVM to EVMS, if I can just do EVMS right now, see

The concept of CSS-based ad blocking has been previously covered here, and here. I've been using it to make my Slashdot ad-free for some time now.

The concept of CSS-based ad blocking has been previously covered here, and here. I've been using it to make my Slashdot ad-free for some time now.

Stewart: You were essentially competing with Celera Genomics in a race to assemble the genome, and they had procured what was reportedly the most powerful civilian computer in history for their effort. What tools did you use to beat them to the result?

Kent: 100 800 MhZ Pentium processors with 256 Mb RAM each, running Linux, the gcc compiler, the vim editor, a whiteboard, and occasional ice packs for the wrists.

Remember everybody's favorite signature? Slashdot Math: 50+1-1 = 49. Taco was so incensed about that he decided to hide Karma from everyone so they couldn't criticize his math skills. This was a good idea, and one he should have stuck with.

Personally, I like to think that Trollback was responsible. But that's just ego talking.

In any event, moderation totals are now shown as percentages in an attempt to hide the number of times a post has been moderated. While it's pretty simple to reverse-engineer this number, you now need a calculator, which raises the bar a bit.

The funny thing, however, is that Taco has once again exposed his math skills to the world. So, once again, we get to put "Slashdot Math" in our .sigs. Are you ready?

-s.

Why do so many Apple dorks think of themselves as "alpha-geeks"?

I don't know any Apple dorks, so I can't provide any insight into that particular question. However, I can explain that my choice of "alpha-geek" was influenced by O'Reilly's attempts to explain the Mac OS X attraction.

Using BBEdit is not macho, and being attracted to shiny objects is not a sign of intellegence...

Right, because Slashdotters are sooooo macho to begin with :) Intelligent perhaps. But (couldn't resist the self-description as a "Windows dork" just for counterpoint) then again . . .

Why do so many Apple dorks think of themselves as "alpha-geeks"?

I don't know any Apple dorks, so I can't provide any insight into that particular question. However, I can explain that my choice of "alpha-geek" was influenced by O'Reilly's attempts to explain the Mac OS X attraction.

Using BBEdit is not macho, and being attracted to shiny objects is not a sign of intellegence...

Right, because Slashdotters are sooooo macho to begin with :) Intelligent perhaps. But (couldn't resist the self-description as a "Windows dork" just for counterpoint) then again . . .

or do the O'Reilly conferences about "free" software seem really freaking expensive?

Irony about free (as in beer) vs. free (as in speech) aside ...

Last year's Open Source Convention was a fortune -- $895 for the "regular" (and early-bird).

PyCon is $150 (early-bird). That sounds more reasonable.

I see that they have sessions/tutorials, but is there really any chance of a good return-on-investment at that rate, unless you're there to schmooze and network? Are there really employers willing to pay this, or consultants who find it's worth the investment?

I'm more interested in first-hand accounts than speculation, but I'll take either. :)

Considering all the work that O'Reilly has already done with educating users on web serving on OS X with Apache, PHP and MySQL already, I'm surprised that they wouldn't even bring it up in a supposedly comprehensive beginner/intermediate book. Left hand/right hand, perhaps.

I currently use Mozilla's 1.3a Mail's Bayesian filter, and so far it's been very effective. However, for a lot of people who don't run their own mailservers (and hence cannot filter server-side) or are on expensive/slow dialup, the very act of downloading spam onto their clients is expensive. Also, spam wastes bandwidth, which does cost money, despite flat pricing models used by most ISPs.

I think it's sad that the no one from the IETF or the open-source worlds has gotten around to creating a better alternative.

here

"I analyzed the RIAA's market data, in particular, the 2001 year-end statistics...First off, unit shipments and revenue were both down. What a focus on total revenue hides is that the per unit revenue rose almost 7%...That puts in familiar economic territory, where a price increase leads to a decline in quantity purchased."

It's not as if it's just any "[t]wo MIT grad students". Garfinkel has written more than a handful of security books over the years.

Go read the anarchist cookbook

There's lots of stuff you can do on your own if you don't want to hook up with a 'professional' terrorist network. The cookbook also goes over things like credit-card fraud and the like for funding sources.

If it stopped at the creation of the MPEG standard he would be right, they wouldn't get anything back from doing it free and open. But I think it's safe to say that MPEG has created an entire industry. The people who created MPEG are known, and the prestige will affect their career. The business model that would allow them to make money would be that they would have the first implementation, and they could compete with others in their understanding of the standard to create the best implementation.Doc Searls did a presentation on 'Infrastructure' which I think is relevent here.

Maybe I completely misunderstand the question, and pardon me if I do, but:

Just install any widely supported NIC along with a number of open source Network Analysis & Diagnosis Tools and your good to go.

The laptop will afford you a lot more flexibilty than a built-for-the-purpose tool.

Okay, besides the ones you mentioned, let's think back to college textbooks and photocopiers, circa 1975. The end result of that was, IIRC, a sign posted above the campus photocopiers (just like Apple's "Don't Steal Music") and some notice to larger off-campus copier companies (like Kinko's, which began off the campus I attended) that suggested they should not sell photocopies of whole textbooks.

It was technically impossible to create a book that would not be photocopied (well, I guess a watermark scheme that reveals a message when photocopied was possible) and, yet, the textbook publishing industry did not collapse! Seems to me that prices continued to escalate, even with the unrestricted ability to buy used textbooks. So, what's to be said? A lot of us college kids in the 70s bought new textbooks even though we could have bought used or, in conjunction with the syllabus, photocopied required readings. I suppose today, college kids could use their pc's scanner and "steal" that intellectual property. Yet, are book publishers in any way concerned with legislating technology for scanners and photocopiers that guarantee that their intellectual property may not be infringed?

Maybe the recording industry has a problem with piracy, but I think they have a bigger problem with competing media, their own price increases (Matthew Gast's Weblog as reproduced at www.oreillynet.com"), a previously noted reduction of rosters, a standard, cyclical generational shift, and a dadgum recession and depressed consumer confidence. There may also be something said about the consolidation of media companies resulting in annual growth expectations that may not be sustainable, which could explain everything or may be a straw man, I don't know. Hollywood, go after people who publish and sell unauthorized copies, but universal schemes to change all technologies so Ted cannot give Carol a copy of last night's Sopranos for viewing at home seems mean and crabby. Hollywood, if you were casting yourself, you'd be Lionel Barrymore.

• O'Reilly has an excellent RSS tutorial.
  
• This article is a good source of RSS Links.
  
• Meerkat shows RSS in action.
  
• This is pretty nifty - an NNTP-RSS gateway. It lets your favorite NNTP newsreader works as RSS newsreader. (See screenshot)

• O'Reilly has an excellent RSS tutorial.
  
• This article is a good source of RSS Links.
  
• Meerkat shows RSS in action.
  
• This is pretty nifty - an NNTP-RSS gateway. It lets your favorite NNTP newsreader works as RSS newsreader. (See screenshot)

• O'Reilly has an excellent RSS tutorial.
  
• This article is a good source of RSS Links.
  
• Meerkat shows RSS in action.
  
• This is pretty nifty - an NNTP-RSS gateway. It lets your favorite NNTP newsreader works as RSS newsreader. (See screenshot)

Oreillynet has been covering OS X for about a year, and has added an open source site which has covered open source OS X apps since June.

I was wondering how we can be prepared for this, interestingly I stumbled over an SVG Vector drawing program named sodipodi a while ago:

Sodipodi
Sodipodi screenshots on Linux with GTK Geramik theme

It is a nice open source vector drawing program. And it got me interested in looking into the SVG format, which also supports (web) animation :-) . This article explains it a bit more:

SWF Is Not Flash (and Other Vectored Thoughts)

Anyway I think SVG will have a bright future and even can replace Flash (SWF) in certain extent, more info on SVG can be found at W3C.org here:

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification
Mozilla SVG Project

I do not know what they are using (as far as I know, unamplified 802.11b is 30 mW).

But, if you can see the other point (clear line of sight), 12 Km can be done with standard WiFi (802.11b) cards with reasonnable antennas (paraboles, horns, SlottedWaveGuide,... )

12 Km is a little bit out of range for tin cans, but we achieved 9.5 km with ...CardboardHorns ;-)
Yet a lighter version : the TetraPak horn is not bad.

But, to be sure, use paraboles like in one of the first long shots.

...And remember: You need 6 dB to double the distance (whatever it is).

DRM is about taking options away from users.

DRM is about preserving the rights of content creators. Period.

If you assume that DRM's goal is to use technology to enforce copyright law, it's still about removing options from citizens. A key element of copyright law is removing options from citizens. The goal is to encourage the creation of creative works, but the actual action is to remove options. I no longer have the option to distribute copies of other people's works. In the absence of copyright law, I would still have the option. (Mind you, this restriction isn't necessarily bad. I also lack the (legal) option to deceive other people in financial matters, to take money from someone by force, or knowingly put other people in danger. I'm perfectly fine with society removing options for the larger good. I support copyright for this reason.) DRM fundamentally removes options. The options it removes may be illegal, but they do remain options.

However, let's revisit the assumption that DRM is tied to copyright. DRM certainly can have a place in situations where copyright is irrelevant. As an employee, my ability to redistribute certain internal documents may be limited by an NDA or other employement agreement (effectively protecting the document with trade secret law instead of copyright). DRM technology might be employed to ensure that I obey the agreement. If I were to get a job requiring security clearance, DRM might work to ensure that the electronic documents I handled remained secret or top secret. The goal is explicitly to remove options (illegal options, but still options).

All of this is why I chose "options" instead of "rights" or "fair use".

Put it this way: if DRM existed that preserved your fair-use rights while taking away your non-right to mass distribute copyrighted material, they would fine with it.

Clearly untrue. Certainly some publishers would be fine with it. Perhaps even most publishers would be fine with such a system. But at least a handful are interested in using DRM to try and restrict fair use to increase profits. Why are various copy restriction flags being enabled on public domain works (here's one reference)? When you're crafting law or code, you have to consider those who will abuse the spirit of the law/code while strictly following the letter of the law/code. Why is the movie industry fighting to ensure that when Casablanca enters the public domain (2037ish), I'll be allowed to copy the movie, but not allowed the tools necessary to make that copy?

Then perhaps you can explain to me what that reasoning is, because I do not understand it.

Sure, look here. In a nutshell, a lot of the code in the drivers does not belong to nVidia. Instead it was written and contributed or licensed to nVidia under highly restrictive licensing. Therefore nVidia cannot release the source without each of the other parties' explicit permission.

You've got to give nVidia some credit. They do a hell of a job supporting the *nix community. Better than any other GPU manufacturer ever has -- ATI and 3dfx both included. Compared to most other manufacturer's complete lack of drivers, nVidia releases complete, stable drivers.

If you're really worried about your kernel being tainted,this article, mentioned earlier on Slashdot, talks about the changes the kernel team is making to prevent non-GPL binary drivers from tainting the kernel. I applaud the kernel team for making these changes and so long as nVidia follows the rules, I have absolutely no problem with using their binary-only drivers.

Get on Amazon and order a whole mess of Linksys WAP 11's. Then get a hand on as many Pringles cans as possible (Pringle can antenna article) . This is the cheapest missile defense system you can build.

I wonder, to what depth, has OReilly actually explored digital media , that he can make such authoritative comments.

There are the freely-available O'Reilly books online, there's Safari with over a thousand books in electronic format, and there's the O'Reilly Network, with weblogs, articles, and book excerpts.

Eldred v. Ashcroft
... 10 had a favourable piece on Lessig and the lawsuit. ... October 13, 2002 - Amy
Harmon of New York Times: uphill battle over copyright. more news ...
eldred.cc/ - 7k - Cached -

The Limits of Copyright
... it an offense to write code to interfere with this use-controlling code, regardless
of whether the use would be considered fair under the copyright law. ...
www.thestandard.com/article/display/ 0,1151,16071,00.html - 34k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

Copyright law and roasted pig.
Communications Copyright law and roasted pig Lawrence Lessig on Eldred v. Ascroft
By Lawrence Lessig October 22, 2002. In 1930, 10,027 books were published. ...
www.redherring.com/insider/2002/10/ roast-pig-copyright-102202.html - 29k - Cached -

O'Reilly Network: Free Culture: Lawrence Lessig Keynote from ...
... A flash version of Lessig's presentation, including audio and other source files. ... their
works) instead of exercising all of the restrictions of copyright law. ...
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessi g.html - 27k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

High court weighs copyright law - Tech News - CNET.com
... Lessig and his allies are hoping not merely to overturn this law, however, but
to build momentum for an all-out legal assault on many recent copyright ...
news.com.com/2100-1023-961467.html - 28k - Cached -

Lawrence Lessig
... Declan McCullagh of CNET News.com mentions Professor Lessig in Left gets nod from
right on copyright law, on a speech given by Appeals Court Judge Richard ...
cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/ - 23k - Dec. 12, 2002 - Cached -

Home--Berkman Center for Internet and Society
... Also see: Digitial Copyright Law on Trial [CNet]; Google Excluding Controversial
Sites [CNet]; ... the Hard Questions: On October 9 Lawrence Lessig appeared before ...
Description: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is a research program founded...
Category: Computers>Internet>Policy
cyber.law.harvard.edu/ - 13k - Cached -

Techdirt:Copyright Law And Roasted Pig - Lessig Pushes His ...
Copyright Law And Roasted Pig - Lessig Pushes His Campaign Forward.
Ramblings Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, October 22nd, 2002 ...
www.techdirt.com/articles/20021022/1311202.shtml - 5k - Cached -

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.

For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey, complaining about Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit head Kevin Browne's comments on the eve of Macworld.

This is such a despicable tactic. Microsoft embraced Apple and gave them funding at the height of the antitrust investigation, as a way of sustaining the idea that there was still competition in the market. Now that Apple's back on their feet, and OS X is giving them a run for the money, they pull out of the market. This decision may end up as badly for Microsoft's Office division as Lotus' decision to skip Windows.

Hackers and "alpha geeks" push the envelope, start to use the new technology, and get more out of their systems long before ordinary users even know what's possible.

A good example that's still a bit far out, but that I'm confident is significant. I held a summit of peer-to-peer networking developers, and when we were sitting around having a beer afterwards, a young FreeNet developer said to Kevin Lenzo (who was there because of his early work on IRC infobots): "You sound familiar."

Kevin mentioned that he was the developer of festvox, an open source speech synthesis package, and that he was the source of one of the voices distributed with the package. "Oh, that's why. I listen to you all the time. I pipe IRC to festival so I can listen to it in the background when I'm coding."

Now I'll guarantee that lots of people will routinely be converting text to speech in a few years, and I know it because the hackers are already doing it. It's been possible for a long time, but now it's ripening toward the mainstream.

" ... I know several who have started using Darwin on Intel hardware as there[sic] Unix underpinnings of choice ... "

Todd Hoff writes:

I'm a Windows-only user and I plan to switch to the Mac on my next purchase because of XP's DRM approach. Using XP would be like voluntarily entering a jail cell and closing the door.

From an interface perspective, I don't find the Mac superior.

Amen to your DRM concerns. Apple has been relatively more enlightened on the subject of DRM, recognizing that most users are fundamentally honest, and unwilling to support the extreme position of fear-mongering media executives.

When industry gets handed lemons on this scale, it has no choice but to turn them into marketing. A common reckoning is that one-third of software is used illegally, but not every theft represents a lost sale. If economic theory has any claim on the real world, Microsoft's pricing should naturally gravitate toward producing an optimum amount of theft. That is, thieves who wouldn't use the product if they had to pay for it, but who might become future customers or who become part of a network of users that makes the software more valuable to legitimate buyers.
...
A sore subject at its antitrust trial, for instance, was Microsoft's practice of awarding large discounts to computer makers who bought a Windows license for every machine they shipped, whether or not Windows was actually loaded. This was supposed to be proof of monopolistic intent, but the only real competitor for Windows is a Windows bootleg. Microsoft's pricing strategy was designed to induce customers not to steal.
...
The entertainment industry is still getting used to the idea that anybody who wants to take the trouble can get its products for free. But as Microsoft has been showing for years, that's no excuse for not making bundles of money.