Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: 640K, Pioneer, Payback
Kudos to the guys behind Pioneer 10! Soft writes: "As a follow-up to yesterday's story, Pioneer 10 was successfully contacted for its 30th birthday, as announced in sci.space.news. The commands that were sent yesterday have been executed by the spacecraft, and more data has been collected by the Geiger Tube Telescope." lostchicken adds a link to Associated Press wire story on Yahoo!', writing "Not bad for a 30 year-old spacecraft. Perhaps those making time capsules could learn something from this?" Several readers also pointed out the SpaceDaily version of the goings on.
What, in the middle of Canadian winter?! schon writes: "An update to this /. story - The Canadian Copyright Board has announced the details of the public hearings on Canadian Digital Copyrights, at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00838e.html. Interested parties should register before attending (details available on the page.)"
Sent to you in compliance with the current Federal legislation An Anonymous Coward writes: "Back in June of 2000 Slashdot.org reported a story called ' Taking On A Spammer' about a spammer being hacked by a pissed sys-admin. The Behind Enemy Lines web page talked about a pump-and-dump spam done by Premier Services and Mark Rice."
(See this page for more information on that scam.)
"Well on February 25, 2002 the SEC filed charges against Mark Rice!"
Death of a legend? Jean-Luc writes "The New York Review of Books has published an article that contains an e-mail from Bill Gates denying he ever said the infamous "640K should be enough for anyone" quote. He foists the blame on IBM and claims he tried to convince them to include more address space from the get go. Very technical and fairly convincing, showing that for all his might Bill is still basically a geek's geek."
They hadn't even gotten to the bowlderizing chip yet ... Dan Gilmor pointed out Intel's strong statement Thursday on copy protection front, "much stronger than the letter sent yesterday. Surprising given their history..." Maybe Intel believes they can do a better job of what deciding what goes into Silicon than a committee of bureaucrats steered by the entertainment moguls can.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
We, the people, need a charismatic, high-profile champion with no stake other than the public interest. Who will take up the mantle?
Yes, Dan Gillmor is absolutely right, we need a champion for individual rights. Someone who can make a case for the public domain that doesn't devolve into an argument about which company can make more money.
Intel isn't going to do it, because Intel is interested only in Intel's profits.
Someone needs to say things like:
- Copyright is not an absolute right, it is a compromise. There can be, and there is such a thing as "too much copyright"
- There is such a thing as public domain.
- All inventions and writings should end up in the public domain, because that's where they came from.
- Dead people's works don't need copyright protection.
- Individuals copy because they want to. A government interested in "freedom" should find a way to ensure people can do what they want. A corporation interested in "capitalism" should find a way to profit from the things people want to do.
- America is about Opportunity, not Guarantee (I believe Lincoln said words to that effect). If your business model doesn't work, find another one.
and so forth. Normally, the Government is supposed to represent the People. Unfortunately, the Government has been priced out of reach of the People.We have a moratorium on internet taxes.. why didn't we have a moratorium on internet copyrights until things got sorted out?
So indeed, who will pick up the mantle?
The only person I know of who makes a moral argument for this is RMS, but unfortunately he doesn't quite fit the description "charismatic"....
While I don't know if BG actually made the 640K quote or not, the history that he provides (i.e., we really wanted to do things right, but the evil hardware people wouldn't let us) is self-serving and not exactly correct.
The Motorolla 68000 did have a 32-bit design, but it only had 24-bit addressing when it came out, which was the same as Intel was attempting to provide with the 80286.
However, it was impossible to use the address space of the 286 because it required the chip to go into protected mode, and MS-DOS made assumptions that made this impossible. While DOS 1.0 certainly couldn't have predicted this, MS had early access to the 286 specs, but they never made the appropriate changes. Digital Research did, with Concurrent CPM-86, but by that time, the MS-DOS juggernaught had pretty much rolled over everyone else.
I don't think Bill's saying, "I never said that." I think that what he's saying is, "That was taken out of context." Perhaps what Bill G. said was, "640k should be enough for anyone ... for now." Which is pretty much what I always figured had happened.
Disclaimer: I think Microsoft sucks donkey balls, and the sooner they stop being a monopoly, the sooner the world will be a much better place.
Yeah, like you really dodged the bullet and avoided that hack -- NOT! Bank switching was what LIM EMS memory (LIM standing for Lotus, Intel, and Microsoft) was all about. Because you never ported MSDOS to the 80286 or 80386, we developers had to resort to hacks like EMS to fit our bloated code (ok, that part is my fault) into the address space.
If Microsoft had kept up with the hardware technology, maybe I wouldn't have torn out so much hair in the 80s, and maybe I wouldn't hate them as much today....
... nah, I'd still hate 'em, because once better OSes started to show up for the 386 (e.g. OS/2 version 2) and people finally started saying adios to DOS, Microsoft couldn't stand the thought of it, so they started pushing Windows down everyone's throats, using dirty techniques such as preloads, per processor licensing, etc.
It's the same pattern that MS used with the Internet and the same that we'll see again with whatever comes next. Microsoft has always been about denying technology, and then when everyone gets fed up with their backwoods Amish luddite mentality and start to leave them, MS does something underhanded (usually involving a monopoly leverage) to lock people in again... only to let their followers/victims rot again while visionless Microsoft grows fat and complacent. Over'n'over because sheep are too stupid to learn. But some of us remember.
Damn, where did that pointless rant come from? Oh yeah, Gates quote reminded me of when I saw them kill the personal computer revolution. Funny how that always gets my dander up.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Most of the previous comments are spot-on, so I'll only suggest one addition (which would likely make the document too long, so feel free to ignore it):
Just my two cents...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
My only suggestion is this. You lay out the issues very well and then at then end get into what looks like a personal attack (I'm sure you don't mean it to be). Here's the changes I'd make FWIW
I am not sure exactly how you think you are benefiting South Carolina with this bill is very confrontational and slightly insulting - it implies he doesn't know what he's doing. How about I do not believe this bill will benefit South Carolina?
Please don't act solely in the interest of your high-dollar contributors. This is even worse - you're implying that he's been improperly influenced by contibutions from business. That's a serious allegation, insulting to his integrity. Mention instead the other side of the coin, following on from your previous sentence i.e. My reading of the proposal is that it will only benefit the large corporations in this country, especially the media conglomerates. Please make sure that you are also acting on behalf of non-corporate interests, the individual constituents who voted for you.
The last sentence can stand if you tone down the other two because you modify the you are doing a disservice with by proposing this bill. Otherwise I might have suggested this bill will do a disservice
The thing to remember is that you are trying to influence this guy's opinion not run against him in the next election. You may believe that he's an idiot who doesn't understand the issue and is in the pockets of big business - but if your letter comes over that way any chance of persuading him will probably be lost.
People have an urge to share. We sing songs, we retell stories. When we see a good movie, or hear an incredibly good song, we go to our friends and try to share the experience with them. Sharing information is a part of human nature, and the purpose of the hundreds of languages that mankind has created over the ages.
The founding fathers of the United States recognized the human need for the sharing of information when they penned the First Ammendment. They said that the right to share information should not be infringed. They did, however, create one, small exception. They allowed congress to give creators of the arts and sciences a short term monopoly over their created works, in the hopes that.
The apparent intent of that constitutional paragraph was that, after a short period of time the works created as a result of that copyright protection would fall into the public domain, where the people could make full and wholesome use of it.
Current copyright law is, however, an abomination of the original intent of the copyright exception. Instead of giving the creating artist control of his or her work for a short period of time, this control is being treated like permanent property. The original 14 year copyright period has now been extended to about 10 times that number -- and hat number is stretching faster than time itself.
Lost knowledgeElectronic information is fragile and ephemeral. A doomsday laser disk created only 15 years ago is now far less readable than it's 16'th century counterpart. The technology used to create it is now obsolete and almost forgotten.
Technical audio tapes of the apollo moon landing were almost unreadable when researchers rescued them from archives only 30 years after Neil armstrong uttered his famous words "One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind".
When Mandella was sentanced in 1961, the speech of the future president of South Africa was recorded on (then) hi-tech plastic strips. Less 40 years later it took researchers years to recreate the technology needed to extract sound from those strips.
And when was the last time you tried to play an 8-track tape?
If history is any predictor of the future, the recordings of today are going to be opaque to the next generation. If the Media industry has their way, todays recordings will be taboo to future generations.
As NASA archivists have found out, the only way to keep yesterday's electronic information available is to transfer it to storage formats available today. The proposed terms of the SSSCA would, however, make such transferr illegal -- especially if the person or company who created the original work was dead, defunct, or simply un-locatable.
Our grandchildren would then be left with the unenviable choice of being forever unable to view what we creating today -- or becoming criminals by attempting to read such mundane things as videos of their parents' first steps.
By the year 2100, todays digital recordings will be far less readable than the scratchy vinyl recordings of the 1940s, but people may be unwilling to decoding them -- fearful of the legal implications of having the technology necessary to decode something recorded today.
If the sssca is allowed to pass, it will, in all liklihood, create a digital black hole in the history of the arts and sciences of the world.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.