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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.
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.