(Well, the GBA is still cartridge based, and they own the portable scene.)
Don't forget that at the time many CD-based games were just "interactive" postage-stamp movies. I think the craze that nintendo was avoiding was the "multimedia" craze, not so much the "mass data storage on CD" craze.
Personally, most of my favorite games are cartridge based, mainly because the constraints force the developers to concentrate on gameplay, rather than just throwing a lot of graphics and sound at it. Unfortunately most of the games for the N64 still sucked.;)
The issue is if I want to work on GPL software, like Linux or GCC. If I do, in order to release my modified version, I need to license it under the GPL. But if the government takes away my ability to copyright, then I can't. So then I can't distribute the work, which means we have less open science than before!
It's great for papers. For one thing, it would prevent the obnoxious practice of making authors sign over the rights to their papers to the publishing company (Springer-Verlag is notorious for this.) It's a good first step towards building a free internet repository for scientific papers.
On the other hand, it could prevent computer scientists from working on GPL (or even BSD code), since derivative works must be copyrighted under the same license. That would really suck, in fact,
Perhaps the law could be amended in one of the following two ways:
- Instead of removing copyright protection, simply require that they give anyone permission to copy the work verbatim. This would jibe with the BSD license and (probably) the GPL.
- Remove copyright from only "scientific papers" or something like that.
Re:Oh, come on. What are YOU talking about!?
on
Bill Gates On Linux
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· Score: 0
I guess since your name is "Jerk City Troll" I'd be foolish to fall for it! But I can't resist!
My point is that Windows is indeed pushing technology. All of that stuff comes out of the box on Windows XP, no setup, it just goes. (Eventually it breaks, too, but it's getting better...) To get most of it on linux you need to install extra stuff, and it's a pain in the ass (I have a degree in computer science and I still couldn't get USB working properly on my linux box). The technology is *available* on linux, but they are not pushing it as well as Microsoft.
>> it has translucent windows > Well actually, it doesn't.
I use linux at work and for my servers, and I like it.
But really, windows is pushing new technologies more than linux.
Windows XP has USB 2.0, it has low-latency audio, it can play DVDs, it has translucent windows, built-in NAT, drag-and-drop CD recording, an MPEG-4 media player, it has an encrypted, compressed file system, they have fine-grained access controls, they have a common language runtime. They are pushing and developing modern programming languages so that we aren't all stuck programming in C. Some of this technology sucks, and most of it they didn't invent, but they are pushing new technology. (I also know that most of this stuff is available on linux, but it's also kind of a pain in the ass.)
Since mp3.com was bought by Vivendi, it has taken a nosedive into the shitter.
mp3.com used to be a place where low-budget hobbyists could get their songs on the internet and heard. That was great. They put ads on it to cover some costs, fine. They added some "premiere" services for bands that wanted to make it big, ok. They instituted dubious "payback" schemes where you get money when people listen to your music, but only if you pay them money first. Recently they capped free users to 3 hosted songs, which is when I stopped using them and moved my project elsewhere. Apparently, they are continuing to make the service less and less useful for hobbyists.
mp3.com, once upon a time, was a place that might have changed the future of music. People could make music at home, for very little money, upload it to the internet, and other people could download it and listen and enjoy it. The problem is that there's little need for record labels and radios in this future. Vivendi obviously knows this, and while it might not be a likely future, they sure aren't going to help it happen.
mp3.com today exists entirely to exploit hobbyists. Basically, if you're too small to get bilked by a real record label, they will screw you there. Sign up for their promotion tools, pay a subscription fee, start selling CDs on-line, and stop being any threat to the music industry. I wish I knew of a great place to upload your music for free, but the other sites like iuma and vitaminic are basically just up-and-coming mp3.coms.
Actually, copyright violation can be a crime if the value of the works is high enough, or it is done commercially. It's unlikely that any casual downloaders would ever have to worry about this.
However, I can see no possible good of conflating terms like "stealing" or "theft" with copyright violation (regardless of how people feel on this ethically), so I'm with you there!
No, it's really not legally theft. I refer you to the copyright code for details. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch5.html) Theft is a kind of larceny, which is deriving someone of property. The law distinguishes property from copies of copyrighted works.
It's up to each person to make up his own mind with regard to the ethical issue. But an ethical system that doesn't distinguish between appropriation of scarce goods (my car, my clothes) and abundant ones (air, digital bits, a public park) is pretty naive, in my opinion. There can be many good reasons to regulate the latter, but they're not the same ones as the former.
> Direct supervision keeps theives in check, and keeps honest folks honest. Indirect supervision is a field-day for theives, > and tempts honest people.
Maybe another way to put this is that without direct supervision, people make thier own laws.
If the record store clerk stepped out to the bathroom for a moment, how many of us would really grab some CDs and take off, now that we weren't being supervised? Maybe those of us who never graduated with the lessons of Kindergarten.
But faced with a music download, it's obvious that nobody is being directly harmed. The person I'm copying from still has the copy, the artist still has his copy, and all is well. It sure doesn't *feel* like stealing (and indeed it's merely "copyright violation). The more philosophical-minded downloaders might wonder if they're creating a disincentive for the artist to make more work, and those people have to consider whether downloads really stop artists from making music. (Do they??) Some people, like me, might enjoy living in a world where artists were driven by art, not money, so they decide that's not a problem.
Well, Judge Kaplan thought it was a circumvention device. It's true that it would need a fairly trivial wrapper to actually call the functions on some input. But its function is rather narrower in scope than an exploit that simply gives access to the machine.
No. DeCSS was found to be illegal because it was a circumvention device itself. Unless this exploit directly lets you play pirated games, I doubt they'd be able to use the same argument..
I would think that an X-Box loader would qualify, but what they're talking about is a general-purpose exploit that allows access to the machine, not something that boots pirated games (though it would be a key ingredient to one).
The DMCA bans circumvention of technological measures that control access to a copyrighted work, and trafficking in devices that are primarily designed for such purpose.
Here we have an exploit (or perhaps just information about the exploit, which certainly wouldn't be a "device") that allows the user to boot an arbitrary program on the XBox. But where is the copyrighted work? Where is the technological measure that controls access to it? There may be a DMCA argument here, but it is far from being obvious!
Yes, we have lots of plugins in the works, but I'm getting hung up on doing a new Windows graphics framework and Marc is still doing the ports of the old plugins to Audio Unit. Perhaps in the late summer we'll have some new releases...
Yeah, maybe in the professional studios. But there are a shitload of hobbyists working on commodity hardware with stuff like Logic and Cubase and Nuendo and Sonar. Ardour doesn't compare to any of these, either (IMO), but that doesn't mean it can't some day.
You might consider one of those MIDI devices with knobs and faders on it, then. I'm with you on the knobs, but doing it on the computer has incredible advantages over a standalone device...
Unless payment of the applicable maintenance fee is received in the Copyright Office on or before the date the fee is due or within a grace period of 6 months thereafter, the copyright shall expire as of the end of that grace period.
Doesn't this mean that someone can just pay their $5 immediately upon creating the work, thus registering for the ~50 year extension? That seems bad to me, since essentially every book publisher (etc.) will just pay that fee when they publish. I thought the idea was that works "abandoned" after 50 years would have nobody around to bother to "renew" them, and then they would pass into the public domain. Even with an ammendment to the law, would someone just be able to set up a service that would automatically send in the forms and payment for subscribers' works when it's due?
However, even if most people still pay the fee up front and get the full length of copyright, the database of such works will be extremely useful for things like project Gutenberg, where one of the hardest parts is simply finding out whether a work is still protected.
Slashdot Mirror
(Well, the GBA is still cartridge based, and they own the portable scene.)
;)
Don't forget that at the time many CD-based games were just "interactive" postage-stamp movies. I think the craze that nintendo was avoiding was the "multimedia" craze, not so much the "mass data storage on CD" craze.
Personally, most of my favorite games are cartridge based, mainly because the constraints force the developers to concentrate on gameplay, rather than just throwing a lot of graphics and sound at it. Unfortunately most of the games for the N64 still sucked.
> Ummm no. your OWN webpage says that SOME of the plugins have the source....
> that is very different from ALL.
Yeah, well, all the source is available. The "some" word is talking about our CVS repository, which doesn't have all the plugins in it yet.
And it can't make a PDF or EPS???
The issue is if I want to work on GPL software, like Linux or GCC.
If I do, in order to release my modified version, I need to license it under the GPL. But if the government takes away my ability to copyright, then I can't. So then I can't distribute the work, which means we have less open science than before!
This would actually come up in my own research.
This is good and bad.
It's great for papers. For one thing, it would prevent the obnoxious practice of making authors sign over the rights to their papers to the publishing company (Springer-Verlag is notorious for this.) It's a good first step towards building a free internet repository for scientific papers.
On the other hand, it could prevent computer scientists from working on GPL (or even BSD code), since derivative works must be copyrighted under the same license. That would really suck, in fact,
Perhaps the law could be amended in one of the following two ways:
- Instead of removing copyright protection, simply require that they give anyone permission to copy the work verbatim. This would jibe with the BSD license and (probably) the GPL.
- Remove copyright from only "scientific papers" or something like that.
snoot.org has had something almost identical to this for quite a while. But those are just 8-bit NES characters, and you can vote like a jillion times.
I guess since your name is "Jerk City Troll" I'd be foolish to fall for it! But I can't resist!
My point is that Windows is indeed pushing technology. All of that stuff comes out of the box on Windows XP, no setup, it just goes. (Eventually it breaks, too, but it's getting better...) To get most of it on linux you need to install extra stuff, and it's a pain in the ass (I have a degree in computer science and I still couldn't get USB working properly on my linux box). The technology is *available* on linux, but they are not pushing it as well as Microsoft.
>> it has translucent windows
> Well actually, it doesn't.
Huh? Sure it does. I am doing it right now.
I use linux at work and for my servers, and I like it.
But really, windows is pushing new technologies more than linux.
Windows XP has USB 2.0, it has low-latency audio, it can play DVDs, it has translucent windows, built-in NAT, drag-and-drop CD recording, an MPEG-4 media player, it has an encrypted, compressed file system, they have fine-grained access controls, they have a common language runtime. They are pushing and developing modern programming languages so that we aren't all stuck programming in C. Some of this technology sucks, and most of it they didn't invent, but they are pushing new technology. (I also know that most of this stuff is available on linux, but it's also kind of a pain in the ass.)
Since mp3.com was bought by Vivendi, it has taken a nosedive into the shitter.
mp3.com used to be a place where low-budget hobbyists could get their songs on the internet and heard. That was great. They put ads on it to cover some costs, fine. They added some "premiere" services for bands that wanted to make it big, ok. They instituted dubious "payback" schemes where you get money when people listen to your music, but only if you pay them money first. Recently they capped free users to 3 hosted songs, which is when I stopped using them and moved my project elsewhere. Apparently, they are continuing to make the service less and less useful for hobbyists.
mp3.com, once upon a time, was a place that might have changed the future of music. People could make music at home, for very little money, upload it to the internet, and other people could download it and listen and enjoy it. The problem is that there's little need for record labels and radios in this future. Vivendi obviously knows this, and while it might not be a likely future, they sure aren't going to help it happen.
mp3.com today exists entirely to exploit hobbyists. Basically, if you're too small to get bilked by a real record label, they will screw you there. Sign up for their promotion tools, pay a subscription fee, start selling CDs on-line, and stop being any threat to the music industry. I wish I knew of a great place to upload your music for free, but the other sites like iuma and vitaminic are basically just up-and-coming mp3.coms.
Actually, copyright violation can be a crime if the value of the works is high enough, or it is done commercially. It's unlikely that any casual downloaders would ever have to worry about this.
However, I can see no possible good of conflating terms like "stealing" or "theft" with copyright violation (regardless of how people feel on this ethically), so I'm with you there!
No, it's really not legally theft. I refer you to the copyright code for details. (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch5.html) Theft is a kind of larceny, which is deriving someone of property. The law distinguishes property from copies of copyrighted works.
It's up to each person to make up his own mind with regard to the ethical issue. But an ethical system that doesn't distinguish between appropriation of scarce goods (my car, my clothes) and abundant ones (air, digital bits, a public park) is pretty naive, in my opinion. There can be many good reasons to regulate the latter, but they're not the same ones as the former.
> Direct supervision keeps theives in check, and keeps honest folks honest. Indirect supervision is a field-day for theives,
> and tempts honest people.
Maybe another way to put this is that without direct supervision, people make thier own laws.
If the record store clerk stepped out to the bathroom for a moment, how many of us would really grab some CDs and take off, now that we weren't being supervised? Maybe those of us who never graduated with the lessons of Kindergarten.
But faced with a music download, it's obvious that nobody is being directly harmed. The person I'm copying from still has the copy, the artist still has his copy, and all is well. It sure doesn't *feel* like stealing (and indeed it's merely "copyright violation). The more philosophical-minded downloaders might wonder if they're creating a disincentive for the artist to make more work, and those people have to consider whether downloads really stop artists from making music. (Do they??) Some people, like me, might enjoy living in a world where artists were driven by art, not money, so they decide that's not a problem.
It's not stealing, it's copyright violation. Don't fall for their twisting of words, at least.
One word.... valgrind.
Irony age over? Great! Bring on the Steely age!
Well, Judge Kaplan thought it was a circumvention device. It's true that it would need a fairly trivial wrapper to actually call the functions on some input. But its function is rather narrower in scope than an exploit that simply gives access to the machine.
No. DeCSS was found to be illegal because it was a circumvention device itself. Unless this exploit directly lets you play pirated games, I doubt they'd be able to use the same argument..
I would think that an X-Box loader would qualify, but what they're talking about is a general-purpose exploit that allows access to the machine, not something that boots pirated games (though it would be a key ingredient to one).
Why is this "obviously illegal" under the DMCA?
The DMCA bans circumvention of technological measures that control access to a copyrighted work, and trafficking in devices that are primarily designed for such purpose.
Here we have an exploit (or perhaps just information about the exploit, which certainly wouldn't be a "device") that allows the user to boot an arbitrary program on the XBox. But where is the copyrighted work? Where is the technological measure that controls access to it? There may be a DMCA argument here, but it is far from being obvious!
No, it doesn't. Read the DMCA by searching for "17 USC 1201" on google.
Hey, thanks. =)
Yes, we have lots of plugins in the works, but I'm getting hung up on doing a new Windows graphics framework and Marc is still doing the ports of the old plugins to Audio Unit. Perhaps in the late summer we'll have some new releases...
Yeah, maybe in the professional studios. But there are a shitload of hobbyists working on commodity hardware with stuff like Logic and Cubase and Nuendo and Sonar. Ardour doesn't compare to any of these, either (IMO), but that doesn't mean it can't some day.
You might consider one of those MIDI devices with knobs and faders on it, then. I'm with you on the knobs, but doing it on the computer has incredible advantages over a standalone device...
Please support VST or Audio Unit plugins; there's no use to a DAW without a modern plugin format...
All of our Destroy FX plugins are available with source, contrary to what the FAQ says.
I love the idea of this bill.
But there's a problem, as far as I see:
Doesn't this mean that someone can just pay their $5 immediately upon creating the work, thus registering for the ~50 year extension? That seems bad to me, since essentially every book publisher (etc.) will just pay that fee when they publish. I thought the idea was that works "abandoned" after 50 years would have nobody around to bother to "renew" them, and then they would pass into the public domain. Even with an ammendment to the law, would someone just be able to set up a service that would automatically send in the forms and payment for subscribers' works when it's due?
However, even if most people still pay the fee up front and get the full length of copyright, the database of such works will be extremely useful for things like project Gutenberg, where one of the hardest parts is simply finding out whether a work is still protected.