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Super Quick Quickies
Quick quickies this evening. First,
^BR wrote in to tell us that the August DaemonNews is out.
Jeff Knox noted the
Oscar MP3 Player, which looks much less pricey than other stereo type MP3 components.
Next, CowboyNeal has completed another round of Slashboxes for you to peruse. The updated list now
includes The Listology, HotHardware, linuxdev.net, BeBits, TheBeSite,
exoScience, Linux Newbie, Technocrat, MacWEEK, and Halflife.org. If
you are having account problems, or have a suggested new Slashbox, contact Neal.
Finally, some minor bug fixes: The date links in the Older Stuff boxes
were flaking out (time zone bugs). Also, replies on extended discussion pages were being lost. My plan has several more bugs on the TODO list. Please check it before contacting me.
Nice.. I love the design. There is already a comment here about the OSCAR being ugly.. I think it's beautiful. Simple, rectangular. It is the essence of practicality. Hardware does not have to be stylized to look beautiful. A lot of new hardware (imac-copiers) tries to go the organic route.. really twisting the design. While those are nice, my favour resides with the austere, artificial, industrial look. Forget beige boxes.. give me the raw metal. Forget little grooves to put stylized power-on and reset buttons in. Just stick a big old switch on the rectangular box, and a couple-of off the shelf leds for HDD activity and power.
-Laxative
That's pretty much right, but there's one more important point.
As the owner of a copyrighted recording you are allowed to make copies for personal use. I'm not sure if the law states one copy or if multiple copies are allowed, but you can not presuppose that the MP3's stored in this device would be redundant, and therefore, it is not possible, from a legal standpoint, to classify this as a device designed for piracy of music.
This all falls under the definition of "fair useage"
Fair Usage also allows you to go to any library and photocopy or otherwise make facimily of any materials found therein for personal study. My father, as an english professor, regularly has his universities library photocopy entire rare books for him to take home or use at his office. These copies are perfectly legal, but often make people who don't know better cry foul.
The legal definitions of fair usage make it impossible to outlaw most devices used for piracy of copyrighted materials. This makes a lot of people very angry, but most countries are supposedly free, and there's nothing you can do about it without removing essential freedoms from the populace.
This aside, I ask you to produce a statement from any recording artist complaining about lost profits due to amateur piracy. Just one. I don't think you'll find one.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Go to your preferences page and down near the bottom there is:
Long Comment Bonus (Assign +1 to lengthy comments):
[A text box with a number in it]
There is no explanation of the number, but I think (after playing with it for a bit) it is the length in chars a comment must be before it gets the +1. Jack it up to a really high number and noone seems to get the length bonus.
This leads me to believe that the boost in score is not 'real'. It just is a filter that is applied every time you view a page of comments.
This sig is false.
Woo-hoo, more slashboxes! Just what I need, an excuse to spend more time at /. then I already do =P
With all the new features and options that have popped up over the last few months, maybe it's time for a Slashdot user's manual for newbies, or forgetful people like me.
According to the page it says it scans for .mp3 files so unless you plan on writing other software for it I don't see how it can pirate regular cds.. And does anybody know how much they really are... I saw the 700 something but it didn't look like it was US...
Cosmic
Usualy, I favor mp3 on any of the record companies.
:-))
The reason is that mp3 is a technology that can be used in many ways which are legal.
However, it seems to me as OSCAR streches that line.
It is made specificly to copy other artists work.
The reason is that it is devided into subdirectories as CDs.
Normally non copyrighted material does not come in CDs, rather it comes as seperate mp3 files.
This is because there is no need to sell it, thus usualy it is no contained in normal media.
(but rather on mp3s, and unsorted tape cassettes).
I think it is wrong to make such a device for the purpose of pirating copyrighter material,
which is the clear purpose of this device.
(that may be the purpose of RIO as well, but it's not "specificly designed for pirated music").
A good example is CDRs.
I agree many people put CDRs to use by burning warez and pirated things,
but many other use it for good reasons (burning debian for friends
If some CDR creator will put special warez abilities in the CDR I'm sure people will be against it,
though they use CDRs in their lives for non-warez purposes.
---
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck,
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Just in case it wasn't obvious, http://www.oscar-mp3.com/baycom.html has the ordering and pricing information for the Oscar. And, to make things REALLY easy, I'll even summarize: Fully Assembled Oscar = 789 DM ($430.44 as of 8/3/99) Kit Oscar = 479 DM ($261.32 as of 8/3/99)
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda