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Slashback: SCO, COPA, AllofMP3, Navier-Stokes, and More
IBM speaks about the SCO suit.. MasterOfGoingFaster brings to our attention Groklaw's detailed analysis and complete transcript of IBM's 10-point response to SCO's claims that Unix code showed up in Linux. From the article: "We've listened to SCO for more than three years tell its side of the story, and the media printed its every word. IBM, when asked to comment, invariably said nothing. Now it tells the court in detail how truly wronged it has been by The SCO Group, and why the court should bring this wrong to an end by granting IBM's motion for summary judgment on SCO's contract claims."
Another angle on COPA. segphault writes to point out an Ars Technica article that discusses in depth the ACLU-vs.-DoD COPA case. The article includes an interview with plaintiff Aaron Peckham, a free speech advocate and the creator of the popular Urban Dictionary web site. Peckham says that if the Internet censorship law were to go into effect, Urban Dictionary might have to shut down or move overseas.
AllofMP3 followups. Two pieces of news after Visa shut off AllofMP3.com. ColinPL writes, "According to Ars Technica, the IFPI lobbied Visa to reject payments from AllofMP3.com. The plan worked, and an IFPI spokesperson said the plug was pulled in early September. AllofMP3.com has resumed its public relations blitz, claiming Visa and MasterCard's decision to discontinue its relationship has no legal justification." And bjoeg writes, "Today Tele2 (a large Danish telco and ISP) received judgment from civil court to block their customers' access to AllofMP3.com. Tele2 has appealed the verdict, and for now access to the site is still open."
Navier-Stokes solution withdrawn. nherm writes, "So I finally decided to take a look at the solution of the millennium problem on the Navier-Stokes equation (previously discussed on Slashdot) and found that the entry on arXiv.org says 'This paper is being withdrawn by the author due to a serious flaw.' So I suppose that the rest of us still have a chance on it? From the arXiv.org page I found this interesting weblog entry with some comments on the issue, pointing to another weblog entry: 'I would not be surprised to learn later that her work, even if flawed, has led the way to helping solve this long-standing problem.'"
A librarian's guided tour of Wikipedia. tiltowait writes, "With the potential rise of Citizendium and the continued media circus surrounding Wikipedia's foibles, it's a good time to review the current state of Wikimania and consider what these disruptive technologies mean for the future of 'authoritative' information sources. If you've ever wanted for a general overview of Wikipedia or needed something to point to when asked, 'Wikipedia? Isn't that just a bunch of lies?' then the 1-hour screencast titled 'Why Wiki?' is for you. The online video is my perspective on the pros and cons of Wikipedia and how it stacks up to traditional publication formats."
The iPod's 5th anniversary. This one should perhaps be filed under "SlashWAYback." buddhaunderthetree writes, "Five years ago today Slashdot was introduced to the iPod and the reviews were mixed to say the least. CmdrTaco set the tone when he opined, 'No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.' Many of the 1044 comments that followed weren't much more enthusiastic. If anyone had dared to predict that in 5 years the iPod would have 70% of the mp3 player market, they would have been derided as an Apple zombie. Here's the original thread: Apple Introduces iPod."
Should be Here
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slashdot has slashdotted itself.
Can anyone get to that link?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If some of the zealots/fanbois/doomsdayists/next-big-thingers would go back and read those comments. Then think about how melodramatic, self-righteous, and - most importantly - certain so many of the posters were, and how wrong and silly they look now.
/. works... ...but odds are against it.
Then (and this is the hard part), they should THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND before they proclaim how their pet tech will take over the world, their hated enemy will crash and burn, everyone will be dead in ten years, etc.
Seriously.
Compare that discussion with pretty much any discussion these days on this site that runs more than 50 or so comments. Reads pretty much the same, doesn't it? Now, I suppose it's possible that this time, we're all much smarter, and our opinions really do dictate the way the world outside
(Never mind me, I'm old, I'm drinking, and I've been building blades via a RIB interface through an RDP connection all day)
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
You claim that "music piracy" does not exist. On whose definitions do you base this? The American Heritage dictionary defines "piracy" to include what the statutes call infringement of a copyright or patent. Therefore, "music piracy" means infringement of the copyright in a musical work or a sound recording embodying the musical work.
Many of the 1044 comments that followed weren't much more enthusiastic.
/. search is useless), and while floating around at 5 I saw 15 posts and most were actually positive about it. Sure there were plenty that dissed it, but the mods sure seemed to think it was a decent device that day. Unless you somehow imagine the Apple fanbois outnumbered the Apple-haters that day. Doubtful 5 years ago. Perhaps certain segments of the Slashdot community wagged their heads but I wouldn't say they were representative of the whole.
I just browsed through that original article (link was busted, had to google it since
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The fact that AllofMP3 is so wildly popular with the masses (heck, even my father and mother use it) should be a clear indication to artists and, god forbid, the music industry that DRM free, affordable, portable music is what people want... and they will pay for it, even if they are offered it for free via P2P.
I stopped downloading music via P2P when I found AllofMP3, and I now pay for it happily. Save me the bullshit about it still being "theft" ad nasuem. The fact is, I am willing to pay for music at a reasonable price in a format I want. I am not willing to pay for music any other way. As such, if I am not able to pay for my music in the format I want, I won't buy it. There is absolutely NO loss of sale either way. I won't buy it if I can't get it the way I want it, period. End of story. This is not a negotiable point. The sooner the RIAA and the rest of the music industry gets this through their heads, the sooner they'll be raking in cash again as people flock to "legitimate" quality online music distribution.
Actually the IBM trial (not likely to be needed) has been put back so Novell can go first. When Novell started it was a slander of title case. Between Novell's counterclaims and SCO dragging Suse into it, the Novell case will decide who actually owns any copyrights that may actually exist. We also have the fact that Novell told SCO to drop their case against IBM, as the asset purchase agreement says they are entitled to do. The other thing is that Novell may get a freeze on all of the money that SCO has, immediately bankrupting SCO. So, a judgement in the Novell case is likely to moot most of the SCO v. IBM case.
Bottom line: SCO v. IBM will never get to trial. My guess is that the bankruptcy trustee will give IBM and Novell everything they ask for. SCO is SO dead.
Shortly after I Visa shut off service for Allofmp3.com I discovered you can still pay with Visa it is just a pain. You buy an XROST Prepaid iCard with your Visa and apply the card to your account. It isn't too bad. This is more of a barrier to new users who are just curious. Existing users who love the service can just put in a $50 payment every few months.
While Mencken's quote "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public" is probably more true today than ever, your examples leave a little bit to be desired. NVidia, while their refusal to GPL their Linux drivers is annoying, is most certainly a leader in 3D graphics technology. AMD is also most certainly a leader in CPU design, as their CPUs have been outperforming Intel's for some time now until the recent release of the Core 2 series. As for the iPod, it definitely has its faults, but it gave people what they wanted: a music player that worked the way they expected it to. Not many others have managed to please so many people with their user interfaces on portable units.
That's true. "Unsanctioned music copying," is the correct term.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Yeah, because a mathematician without a first-rate pedigree couldn't possibly do important math. (As for Brooklyn Polytechnic, I know of at least three prominent mathematicians who earned their undergraduate degrees there.)
Even if the paper was withdrawn, I'd venture that it's likely it will still lead to a correct proof. Even Wiles' proof of Fermat was originally flawed and had to be corrected.
DRM-crippled wireless. Less space than an iPod. Lame.
The Department of Defense doesn't have anything to do with COPA. Reno and Gonzales were Secretaries of Justice.
Of course, the way things are going, we'll be fighting The War Against Titillation (living up to the acronym far better than the current iteration) and attacking rogue states for hosting WMAs (weapons of mass arousal).
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
As the ISP said an effective block of allofmp3 would cost in excess of $15 mio, court actually listed a series of acceptable solutions to the problem.
So Tele2 has now implemented one court suggestion, blocking www.allofmp3.com in DNS. They know, and IFPI knows, that it can easily be bypassed (hosts file, using DNS at another ISP, TOR etc).
The judgement can have implications for all of EU, since the case has been run as en EU law case. So if the ISP loses the appeal, IFPI will use this to go to other countries to have ISPs shut down allofmp3.
The most bad about all this is, that the content of allofmp3.com is not illegal in Russia where it is hosted, so you could say it is censorship.
Penny got her PhD when she was 21, has held a post at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, was offered a MacArthur grant the first year they came out (but turned it down), and is extremely well respected in her field. Virtually all of the top mathematicians in the U.S. know her or know her work in the field of partial differential equations. She's quite brilliant. Withdrawing a paper is no big deal.
No, all the money doesn't stay in AllOfMp3's pocket.
Like in some other "pre-DCMA" countries, in Russia, if you want to distribute music, you just have to pay a tax to the local body of governement who's in charge with TV tax and Boardcasting tax.
Once the tax is paid, the company is free to boardcast freely whatever music it wants.
The Boardcast tax institution in turn invests the money, with different proportion (depending of the country) between the nationnal institution handling copyrights, state-sponsored cultural projects and the company's pocket.
Then the money transists to the pocket of the copyright holders of that country were it usually stays unless it goes to some sports car dealer.
The problems is, in Russia, the laws and the institution are completly out-dated (back from when it mostly concerned low power emitters) and doesn't take into account for internet (wich may generate much more copie than what is covered by the tax.
Unlike other countries like Switzerland, that also have a similar boardcast tax, but were the company in charge is making project to introduce a system usable for the internet (mostly based on an internet PC tax similar to what is appearing in Germany, but also used to pay the copyright holders in Switzerland)
Per (current) Russian law, AllOfMp3 is completly legal : They're diffusing music. To do that they have to pay a (small) tax. They paid it. It's ok.
The problem are :
1. The RIAA and other equivalent are complaining they aren't receiving as much money as they should. This is partly due to :
- The current tax being outdated and not taking into account the internet - This is currently being fixed, new law are going to be introduced.
- The long chain between their pocket and AllOfMp3 : the nationnal tax institution may spend the money on other purposes (sponsoring local projects), the money transists via russian copyright holders who hold rights for the music in russia, were the website is hosted, and who keep their part of the share.
- They would prefer a more direct solution like the one used by GooTube, back when Google Video and YouTube got deals from copyrgiht holders. Not a tax-based solution that may end-up, OMG, not in exclusively in their pocket, but sponsoring real artists.
- The legendary greed of the **AAs and friends who are used to earn eleventeen gazillions of cash for royalties not only by resselling the same crap over and over, but even by just sitting and claiming money from other distribution means in which they didn't do a damn thing. This is specially significative in the case of AllOfMp3's because, as regulary pointed by
2. AllOfMp3 is claiming that it want to pay the artists. This can be considered as false claims, as :
- they aren't paying the artists directly, but paying a tax.
- maybe some local artist will get some money, but the bulk of it is lost inside russian copyright holders.
The ideal would be a solution were AllOfMp3 found a way to dirrectly pay the artists. Which is hard.
What user want is a solution that is both legal and provides hi quality music (no-DRM, lossless or high-bitrate compression). But this is unlikely to happen, because almost all company (and soon in Russia too), have to deal with music majors to negotiate rights of diffusion. And no music major is going to accept a format in which user could do whatever they want.
It's sad but I start to think that indeed, like some website like downhillbattle are arguing, the only hope is to see more small independent groups spontaneously publishing part of their work for free and hoping for monetary compensasion from concerts and such.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A lttle more on AllofMP3.
A court in Kopenhagen (Fogderetten) has now delivered its verdict (Oktober 25 2006) between IFPI and the Danish ISP Tele2, where IFPI wanted to force Tele2 to block AllofMP3.
This court verdict (21 pages PDF in Danish) is quite suprising, not that it forces Tele2 to block access to Allofmp3.com, but rather how the verdict does it. Among other things the court says (transladed to english below):
The court finds .... that also the temporary fixation of the work in the form of electronic impulses, that goes on in the routers while transmitting the data packets over the internet, is covered by the 2 in copyright law.
This means that the court ruling finds that Tele2 are unlawfully making copies while routing their customers communication. So they are not directly forced to block information from Allofmp3.com, they are found to be making "pirate copies" when doing their job of directing communication on the internet, that is what a router does, and internet cannot function without it. This basicly means that this court has forbidden the internet in denmark, since an ISP can be held responsible for its customers communication. This goes also for modern mobile communication too, since a mobile phone also can be used to unlawfully communicate otherwise allredy published and not stamped with secrecy information. It is a lot like if the old telephone company had been held responsible for what its customers said on the phone. Tele2 has appealed this ruling.
Yes there is.
When a major record label hold the rights to a band's songs to ransom, demanding a number of solo albums by each member if the band split and ever want to perform their old songs again in their new guises, I'd call that piracy. When a major record label hold their customers to ransom, demanding more money for the same song as they already paid for once but playable on a new device, I'd call that piracy. When a cartel of major record labels buy laws limiting the usefulness of recording hardware, I'd call that piracy.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Looking at Lehigh University's Math department website, this woman got her PhD at, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1978.
While she seems to have some interesting research, it just seems odd that a mathematician on the verge of solving one of the great outstanding problems in mathematics attended such a no name school. Does anyone know something about the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn that I don't?
She was a woman getting a PhD in mathematics in 1978. It is entirely possible that the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn was a more welcoming environment than some of the big league schools. Even today some women complain about the atmosphere at some of the "big-name" schools.