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Slashback: Nerves, Unis, Subtitles
Yes, does that come with insurance? An anonymous reader writes "Channel 4 news has a small report on the way that financial institutions are moving their computer systems and data backup out of central London to establishments such as The Bunker and Sealand."
Suddenly, those places seem a bit like less of a novelty and more good plain sense.
Copyright vs. Presumptive Scanning, part VXIIIXIX AnElder writes "The SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) now reports that 'Recording companies have asked the Federal Court to allow their computer experts to scan all computers at the University of Melbourne for sound files and email accounts, so they can gather evidence of claimed widespread breaches of copyright.' Are libraries next? "Counsel for the companies, Mr Tony Bannon SC, said industry studies of piracy had found public institutions such as universities and libraries were the biggest repositories of unlawful sound recordings."
Speaking of brand integrity. increment writes "The Engrish TTT Captions Site that was mentioned earlier here has apparently received a cease and desist order from AOL/Warner Bros and taken down their hilarious bootleg screenshots of The Two Towers. You did know that AOL is the parent company of New Line Cinema, right? AOL probably contends that humorous captions 'degrade their brand integrity,' though they should be grateful for such a vivid illustration of the poor quality of bootlegs. A few mirrors of the site can still be found around the net."
What about robotic juicers for the home? CallNElvis writes "Here's another interesting (translate that to "Cool! I want one") site lazydrinker.com showing a tabletop automatic drink pouring machine. It seems to be a little more polished than the last one posted here. The site includes a pretty cool mpeg of it in action."
Blend it into Knoppix, please :) 3-D modeling program Blender was converted from a proprietary license to the GPL last October. What's been going on since then? An anonymous reader writes "A couple of days ago, Blender 2.26 was released. This is the first open source version, and has all the features of the previous proprietary version, except physics support in the gamekit, which was not owned by NaN, and could thus not be opened.
Blender is 'the vi of 3d-modeling,' and was Freed by the community, when NaN (the company creating blender) went broke. It is platform independent (with roots in Unix), scriptable, has a steep but rewarding learning curve, ingenious but nonstandard user interface, and can be used to make games, 3d-web-thingies (there exists a browser plugin) and of course images, animations and models (which among others, can be exported to POV-ray)."
Mandrake keeps moving -- give it a whirl.
An anonymous reader writes "The Mandrake 9.1 testing cycle is coming to an end. I haven't noticed any big fan-fare for testing this version, but I noticed that RC-1 is now on many of the ftp mirrors found here.
If you like the distro, don't forget to join MandrakeClub where you can help the company and have a say in what packages they include in their user-friendly distro."
I've heard some people say that Blender was hard to use. They don't know what hard to use means. They should try this version.
Looks like Blender is going multi-lingual! cool.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
May I be the first to point you to this penny arcade strip on the topic: Penny Arcade
Disco Stu was talkin' to you.
They want to scan their email too?
We all have seen the clauses in the Terms of Service that say that email is not private, that this is univerisity owned equipment and such. I can understand if they were going to scan incoming email for attachments, but it would appear that they want to scan the student's personal computer too!
My bet is that if they scan the student's computers that they are going to find more porn than music...
No Not Again! Its whats for dinner.
Here's something similar, but not at all safe to look at if you are at work. This is great for you really really lazy folks.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Moderators, I'll save you the trouble of reading this, this post is just way off topic.
Has anybody been following futurama on the Cartoon Network lately? In two separate episodes, Professor Rupert Farnsworth (sp?) was censored while saying "Sweet Zombie Jesus!" - arguably one of the funniest expletives in the show. Specifically, the word "Jesus" was removed (replaced with silence).
I am shocked and outraged! Who's responsible for this, damnit!!
A neighbooring school, to where I shall be attending, had a like threat. What did people do? The college store suddenly had USB 2.0 and Firewire hard drives in stock. People copied everything to hard drives and stored them in a safe place in case the threat was real. It wasn't, but they were prepared.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Site: Someone set up us the lawsuit!
AOL: How are you hobbitses
AOL: All your base are belong to us
AOL: You are on the way to destruction
Site: What you say !!
AOL: You have no chance to survive make your time
Site: Take off every 'precious'
webpage
Clearly you misread the article. It's about Blender, not Bender.
In any event, I noticed that too and found it odd and crappy. I don't watch anything else on that network so I don't know how thick their censoring usually is, but I would guess that since it is first and foremost a children's cartoon network, it's probably thicker than Fox's.
"Linux is for geeks, beos is for nobody, Mac OS is for actors, XP is for people" - Anonymous Coward
It's a well known adage that engineers are supposed to be lazy. Larry Wall enumerates it as one of the traits of good programmers and the impetus behind Perl. What they mean is that engineers should strive to automate repetitive tasks instead of performing them manually each time.
Lazy Drinker has clearly misunderstood the concept. The device they show is not automated in any way. The user still has to move the cup(!) under the spout and type(!!) commands into an attached computer to begin pouring the drink. Frankly, pouring the drink is the easiest part of the process. Any fast food restaurant has for ages had machines that have been doing this kind thing.
Lazy Drinker has arguably made pouring drinks *more difficult* by way of this device. It's kind of sad that Slashdot is reduced to running such a non-story.
I have been pwned because my
Erm... no.
How do I know? I got a copy when I went to China. Hey don't bitch - The movie won't be in Japan for another two monthes (maybe one and half), and if you don't make it available when I am WILLING to pay and see it - you'd bet your ass I'm gonna buy the 1USD copy off a street-stall when it's available.
So anyway - the bootleg was actually for submission to the academy awards - so the quality was definitely not bad. You can imagine academy awards copies are better than the "sit in the theatre w/ a camera" copies, by a far margin. If I ever decide to choke up the cash for a real copy (probably after all three are out), I'll let y'all know. but by that time I wonder if anyone still cares =)
But, this really means that the academy awards ppl is leaking films. so... why arn't you guys (MPAA) looking harder at your OWN PEOPLE? like, the academy, for one?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
They are legal for one reason: journalistic interest in illustrating what the bootlegs look like. The First Amendment trumps copyright.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Good. We should respect Christ's name. Isn't it amazing that after so many years we're still talking about Jesus Christ, even those who don't believe slander Him as they curse His glorious name.
Praise be the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
I think that that whole incident with AOL Time Warner losing $98,000,000,000 just last year does a bit more to "degrade their brand integrity", not to mention that at least once a week they are in the news because a board member is fired or leaves the company because the whole entity hit the fan a while back.
It's been a while since I took civics, but I remember one thing for sure: Constutional Ammendments are, for all intents and purposes, on equal footing to the rest of the Constution. Ammendments are not "less authoritative" than the rest of the Constution; they are, legally, exactly the same thing.
I agree, in principle, with your statement that the First Ammendment is not relevant to this discussion. However, fair use is. In my opinion, fair use applies to this issue, and AOL/Time Warner has no case.
There have been a number of memos from the Dean lately about copyrighted material, including music. The University's stance is that any copies of music, whether you own an original or not, are illegal unless you have written permission from the copyright holder. I believe that this is consistent with Australian copyright law, which (correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't seem to have a Fair Use clause. If that's true, it makes me wonder why you can buy solid-state MP3 players in this country at all.
find / -name "*.mp3" -print returned nothing on my laptop, so it's not a big deal to me, and since it's the University's equipment, they're entitled to set their own rules. But searching our hard disks doesn't exactly foster a trusting relationship between staff and university. More to the point, it's also going to have a nasty effect on research on audio compression.
The screenshots from the two towers bootleg are illegal for two reasons:
a) They are not authorized pictures from the movie and could possibly spoil the movie for someone who hasn't seen it and that can result in lost sales
I guess I have to see a piece of legislation that bans movie spoilers, descriptions, opinions, etc. That piece of legislation doesn't exist in the U.S., nor do I think it exists in Norway. In fact, using parts of copyrighted work for fair use, including speech, opinions, caricatures is perfectly legal and done daily almost everywhere around the world.
b) Showing pictures of a "bootleg" of a movie could potentially promote the art of bootlegging (which already is responsible for millions in lost/stolen sales)
What a ridiculous statement! Also, showing murders, mass killings, drug use, rape, etc. in many AOL/Time Warner movies could potentially promote the art (?) of such actions. So, those movies should be censored and deemed illegal too. Censor everything?
Aol/Time Warner is within their rights and has a duty to protect their copywritten work. Sorry folks.
Sorry man, everyone else is also within their full rights to use copyrighted works within the fair use guidelines. Seems like AOL/Time Warner should go after people who copy and sell their work, rather than consumers.
No, you are wrong. Yours is the most ignorant.
Amendments to the Constitution ALWAYS override the main body of the Constitution. That's the definition of an amendment. Something that changes the original document.
The result of the First Amendment is the doctrine of "fair use." Fair use was not created by Congress, but was created by the courts in order to reconcile the clash between the monopoly clause (which authorizes the government to create speech monopolies in the form of copyright) with the First Amendment (which guarantees freedom of speech.) Fair Use was developed to "save" copyright from being declared unconstitutional in light of the First Amendment.
The theory behind Fair Use is that copyright is compatible with the First Amendment, so long as copyright does not suppress speech. In other words, I can be stopped from reprinting and selling copies of "Gone With The Wind", because "Gone With The Wind" has already been published, sold, and made available to the public. The public already has access to that particular speech, and is therefore minimally harmed by my not being allowed to publish an unauthorized edition.
That's the theory, anyway. In 1976, the copyright laws were rewritten, and the Fair Use doctrine was codified into law. However, the scope of copyright was so enlarged in the 1976 rewrite that the copyright laws are now arguably unconstitutional. Prior to 1976, copyright did not extend to derivative works. Now it does.
The extension of copyright to derivative works flies both in the face of the First Amendment and the copyright clause itself.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but the copyright laws outlaw speech that is derived from a copyrighted work.
The monopolies clause authorize Congress:
The 1976 copyright law goes far beyond this. In addition to giving authors the right to exclude others from copying and publish the works of the author, it allows an author to exclude other authors from publishing their own original works.
For instance, there are probably hundreds of authors who are fully capable and willing to write and create additional "Winnie The Pooh" stories and movies. Some of those authors might very well rival the vision and artistry of A.A. Milne. However, because the Disney corporation owns the copyright on Winnie the Pooh, the only Winnie the Pooh books and movies that we will see in our lifetime are the forgetable direct-to-video trash and crappy commercial children's picture books.
The 1976 copyright revision has been a complete disaster. It has resulted in the massive consolidation of copyright power, the forced destruction and dumbing down of culture, and a wave of speech suppression that has never been seen in the history of the United States.
Tis amazing and really kind of sad what a couple of anally retentive politicians can do to a country. Our minister for imformation technology is most likely still trying to work out why computers come with cup holders.
Another good reason to join MandrakeClub prior to 9.1 is their ftp server download script.
On the day of the release, head over to MandrakeClub and use their download script. It tells you which servers have the distro and open slots, and you just zip on over there and grab them without having to wait in long queues/redialing to get into ftp servers.
It's like a world-wide mirror load-balancer. Pretty neat, IMHO.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
How do you tell "unlawful sound recordings" from legal ones?
I have a whole lot of MP3's on my hard drive -- all of it personally ripped from legally purchased CD's. (Except that which I downloaded, legally, from MP3.com as explicitly permitted by the copyright holder, and much of which I ended up buying on CD anyway.) So, supposing the RIAA, et al. were to scan my computer (as if I'd allow them), how could they tell whether or not the files I have are there legally?
I ask because I am concerned that the answer is "you can't tell, so we'll just have to make *all* copyrighted sound files illegal."
I don't condone copyright violation, and don't want my rights curtailed because of it.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
and no one has to be there at all.
KFG
the First Ammendment is not relevant to this discussion. However, fair use is.
They're the same thing. The "Fair" part about the use is that it is in support of freedom of speech.
Duplicating an author's work is against copyright law. But duplicating parts of the work may be necessary to produce other kinds of original, protected speech (like journalistic review and academic analysis), and is allowed.
"Fair Use" is basically the courts' established interpretation of the boundaries between the First Amendment and Section 8.8.
Just pick a few of the folks sharing gigabytes of stuff [...] and "make examples" out of them. Then everyone else will delete^H^H^H^H^Hencrypt their files with a quickness!
Reminds me of the late '60s / early '70s, when "the computing center" was a centralized empire at each university where everybody (except the administration) did their computing, and a 50 MB hard disk looked like a washing machine (and disk farms actually WERE sometimes referred to as "laundromats").
The big U where I was an inmate had a policy against "frivolous use of the computer" (which had been paid for by research grants on the condition that nobody got a cheaper rate on processor seconds, kilobyte months, or what-have-you than the grant that bought the box). So games were verbotten. Also: Obscenity was frowned upon (due in part to an unfortunate incident with typewriter pictures on a line printer just as the sponsors' tour party went by it).
Well, the typewriter-interface Star Trek game hit the timesharing machine - and quickly became a major consumer of CPU time. The center's personnel deleted a publicly-known copy. And another. And several more. And it turned into an arms race.
Encrypted copies all over the disk farm. HUNDREDS of 'em. Software to search the disks for more. People doing things like inserting the comment "Kirk Spock Klingon phaser Enterprise NCC-1801" in otherwise-unused lines of configuration files (for the joy of watching the use counts go up as the tools kept finding it and the staff kept looking at it only to discover that it was not part of a game). Conservative guesstimates were that AT LEAST one whole washingmachine's worth of storage was given over to encrpyted copies of the game.
And things started going wrong.
The last straw was twofold - two big mistakes within about a week of each other:
A student named "James Kirk" found his thesis work (in a file of the same name) deleted, with no backup. Oops.
And the medical school was just finishing a several-year, multi-million dollar project on the critical path to approval for a new drug. The drug was related to the endocrine system, so one of the tests was to dose rats with it when they were in the womb or young, then measure their penises to see if their size at maturity was affected. The project accumulated the data, as it was collected, in a file on the heavily-backed-up Computing Center disk farm. The file was named "Rat Penis Data".
One day the grad student went to enter the latest set of measurements - and found the file had been replaced with a self-righteous flame about misuse of the computer.
Of course the center staff hadn't done a backup of the "obscene" file just before the replacement. So even if the file were restored, the data since the last backup was lost, and atempting to re-enter it from paper records risked missing or double entries, even if all the paper could be sorted out. Project's results are now invalidated. Med school lost megabux. Drug company's product was set back by years.
Needless to say there was quite a bit of interdepartmental pressure to take the culprits out behind the woodshed for a sound thrashing. And rabid enforcement of such policies got a major setback.
But it was also the beginning of the end for the Center as an all-controlling computer empire.
Up to that point it, like such centers at most universities and corporations, had been in a position to veto other departments' computer purchases. The Regents (or the administration acting as their agents) would take such requests to the Comp Center for evaluation - and the evaluation would always be "they should use the timesharing system at the Center". And the other departments wouldn't push (or would sneak a PDP-n in as automation in some test instrument). Now the integrity of their data was at issue, and the Center had proven itself incompetent on this issue. So first the Medical Center and then other departments pushed for, and won, their own machines.
And the Center went on to salvage its position by specializing in networking. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Try looking here:
http://www.blender3d.org/Education
All they'll require is for everyone to be fitted with a tiny ear implant which bills a simple rate for all kilosounds per hour heard.
The following billing schedule is applicable for single-channel and stereophonic royalty service from single-eardrum consumers to double-eardrum consumers as metered by RIAA.
Sound Charge:
BASELINE (TIER I) QUANTITIES
per kiloSoundhour per Month
Radio/XM Satellite Transmission $0.00403
Internet Distribution $0.03485
Rock Star Drug Rehab Programs $0.00231
Power Ballad Generation $0.04542
Glam Rock Decommissioning $0.00045
PFRA (Price Fixing Record Amounts) $0.00962
CD Copy-Protection Reliability Services $0.00384
Total Rate $0.10052
MINIMUM CHARGE (per eardrum per sound per day) $0.12345
In the summer of 2XXX, wholesale spot prices for sounds began to escalate to levels unanticipated by the RIAA. The rising prices translated into dramatically increased sound royalty costs and revenue undercollections for the recording studios. The royalty costs of the sounds heard during the crisis, along with the costs of forward purchase obligations incurred by RIAA, must now be recovered.
How much use would a firewall be vs. a University? I would assume it would keep them out, but they'd just call you and demand you disable it or have your connection turned off. But then, that would give you warning and time to delete any files they wouldn't like (legal or illegal).
But couldn't you argue that turning off your firewall would open you up to nasty hackers? I suppose it's no win, but the warning time would be nice (wouldn't take too long to put it all onto CD-Rs or Zip disks, anyway).
GL
Since AOL forced the removal of the pix I suppose I'll have to buy the pirate DVD to see them.
Sadly, universities are being forced to get more and more funding from the business world, as the federal government cuts more and more away from tertiary education spending - so when big business comes along and makes demands it's harder for unviersities to retain their independence or integrity.
Scanning for "mp3" might catch downloaders of mp3 files but what about commercial pir8s who are ripping many .wav files off CDs? Or simply ripping from CD to CD without storing files?
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