We'll, we've been hearing about the United States governments actions in regards to the monitoring of email (the carnivore system, etc), and now its about the right time for the rest of the world to come in a bit too. It does look as if all governments are taking it upon themselves to monitor email for "illegal activity" which brings up some interesting questions.
Why do governments beleive that email is different than snail mail? Is it because its easier to use, or just easier for them to read? I'm not quite sure, I tend to think that they are treating it like phone lines because they can, not because of any sort of precedent. You can't open up a snail mail letter because of the envelope and people would know you're reading it, but you can easily tap a phone line, as its not as easy to detect the intrusion of privacy. Email follows the path of the phone line, but its just easier, as they can just intercept it before it gets there, and there is really no way for anyone to know if they've read it. I guess this is quite obvious material...
While I have nothing to hide in my emails, I guess its just starting to piss me off that all the governments of the world are starting to take their turns reading my email just in case I might be a terrorist threat. Seriously now, how many terrorist organisations would be dumb enough to not encrypt their emails that they send to each other, its ludicrous. I for one am going to start encrypting everything just to piss of the government...
If enough people would do this sort of thing, it would be impractical for the government to do this sort of thing, and hopefully it will just go away.
The ACLU is backing legislation introduced to the House and the Senate to guarantee that your medical records can't be accessed electronically. The ACLU says that, as of now, the U.S. has no coherent, consistent medical privacy policy, and that a nationwide law is necessitated by the advent of electronic records and national insurance companies. Among the breaches of privacy that the ACLU reports is a Maryland banker who accessed medical records of people diagnosed with cancer before deciding whether or not to give them loans. Also, a University of Illinois survey found that 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies check medical records before they hire or promote.
When I first looked at this, I responded in the typical, "hell yeah!!" manner as my privacy was being compromised. However, there are some other questions to think about on this matter. While I haven't gone out and looked at all of the policies or read this legislation yet, I immediatly question this policy to block all electronic access to medical records. Which seems to me to be a bit of overkill and quite ludicrous.
This is a very sticky topic that could get ugly. While I don't want the obvious infractions that have happened and could happen, I would like it alot if I'm brought into an ER and that hospital would be able to access my medical records and find out if I'm allergic to a medication that they are about to inject me with. Personally, I find this to be a good thing, so I would want them to be able to access this very quickly and not have to wait a couple of days (by which time it would most likely be too late) to get the records.
I'm thinking that a combination some new policy with the old policy would be in order. If I remember correctly, as of now people need to get written permission to get into your records (non electronic), why not combine this with the new digital signature policy that is coming through, that way you can get almost instantanious access with the privacy policy still in place.
The only problem here is that it still doesn't solve the "coming into the ER" problem as they would have to get your permission first, but something tells me that they have policies in place for that right now, and they could just adapt a little bit (such as, if you are incapable of giving permission and they need the info and fast, they will assume you give permission... a little bit of privacy lost, but in my opinion, for a good cause).
I guess I might just be missing something, but why is flashline.com interested in this endeavor at all, except for the obvious advertising? Unless they somehow developed some of the software associated with the project, my guess is that they are just footing a good portion of the bill in order to have their name thrown on a tarp around the igloo or something like that.
Are we starting to see a new era here in scientific research? While you are able to get some money from good ole Uncle Sam, in order to do anything really cool you have to get someone to sponsor you and then agree to wear their logo?
I can see both a good and a bad associated with this type of sponsorship. While you are going to more money from private sources in order to do some really cool things, isn't this going to end up like ancient Rome, where people were only willing to foot the bill for really big and cool things that people would always see rather than the essentials. For instance, it was very popular to build a theater in the Roman world, and the rich people would gladly dole out the cash to build one of those as people would go there and associate their name with it. However, you didn't see people lining up to spend money on the roads (well, sometimes, but usually not), nor for basic infastructural needs of the cities. Sometimes even when the did this, they made very shoddy but large buildings, so the people were impressed, until the damn thing fell down and killed a bunch of people.
What I'm getting at here, is that this gives the possibility that the only things that are going to get funded are the sexy projects, like a mission to Mars rather than others which may have more actual value to people but have much less sex appeal (my mind is failing on these right now, but for the sake of argument, we'll throw out diabetes research, as i don't recall having heard much about that lately).
Just to be clear, I don't have anything completely against corporate sponsorship of research projects, as its giving some funding to a great project. However, I wonder at the precedent that its setting and the consequences that we will see from it. Though we may not see them right away, they may show up sometime in the future.
There are many other reasons that India could be looking to send stuff to the moon other than just the same old scientific reasons that have been brought up in the article and in the various threads that I have seen.
First off, India is in need of some serious PR in their favour. While many people on their side in the Pakistan vs. India debacle, they need something to bolster the spirits of their people and make others think about them as more than just a country with a crapload of people and a few nuclear weapons. What better than a mission to the moon to proove themselves better than these other fledgling countries in the technological areas?
Also, as the country is in some serious tension over the nuclear arms issue, the fallover effect of technology in this area could be quite useful to them. After all, new rocket techology could allow them to create missles that could carry a nuclear warhead much farther than before, thus making other countries who were thinking about backing Pakistan much more wary in their support.
I'll admit that this is a very dark view of the reasons for going to the moon, but they are things that should be taken into consideration when you look at their motives. With motives like these, the Indian government will be much more willing to throw money at this project, whether it is something that they should be doing (as they could push that money into things that are needed much more than the new knowledge that this mission would probably bring -- but thats just the humanitarian hippy in me coming out).
Well, I hate to say that I saw this one coming from a mile away, but back when the judgement first came in, I noted that this was most likely going to be handled like a radio station
Unfortunatly, in this case, I would have to agree with the RIAA, as mp3.com was making money off of their intellectual property without paying up. This is where sites that have you rip your own mp3's get away with it, since you are using your own copy (which will most likely differ digitally -- at least to some small degree). The only small analogy I can think of is if you made a tape of a CD and played it for yourself versus someone else making a tape and playing it for you.
The whole point of getting rid of non-free is to move Debian closer to its goal of being a completely free distribution. Many people (both in Debian, and in Slashdot, and in other places) have brought up the fact that this move would basically compromise Debian's position as a viable distribution, as it would remove many packages that are quite usefull for which viable and free alternatives have not been developed.
Personally, I think that this move is a little bit ahead of its time. While many of these packages are in production, they aren't finished to a point where Debian would be weakened by their subsitution. Thus it would be in the best interest of the distribution (and its user base) to keep non-free and adopt a different plan. I see a couple of different options
Getting rid of non-free: While this would immediatly vault Debian to its goal of being completely free, it offers many obstacles in the way of usability. I personally think it would be impracticle at this point to completely dump non-free.
Moving non-free to a new location: This frees Debian of the cost of maintaining non-free (at least in some sense), but it takes away from the ability of Debian to keep their system together as a whole. If they outsource it, then that other group is responsible for upkeep, and I think that the use of those packages would present more problems than right now.
Different installation options: Perhaps there could be some sort of a compromise to move Debian towards their goal, but still maintaining the usability that they have right now. Why not have an option in the installation (I'm not sure if its there, its been a long time since i've installed) where you could mark the machine to be completely free, in this instance the apt.sources file could be modified so that it only gets packages from the free sections (and thus most likely also forgets about contrib). This way, if you want to be idealistic (like I most likely would), your sources list would only allow you to get free packages. However, if you are the average user who doesn't really care, then you could have your non-free packages. While this wouldn't solve the problem of the policy statement, it would move Debian a step closer without making the system much harder to use.
No changes: I currently don't see this happening, with all of the debate that is occuring, but you never know. This would keep the current users happy, but it would forget about the idealistic side. However, it could be argued that if you wanted a system that was totally free, you could just avoid installing non-free software (much like their arguument in the opposite direction), however, I don't like this option, as it really makes no move at all.
Overall, I would say that a motion in the middle would be the best, as it would move them slower to their goal so as not to upset the user base, which would be in their best interest. And I must add the disclaimer, that I am a Debian user, but not a maintainer.
I'm concerned that ease-of-use will yank the power and configurability that makes Linux ssuch an ideal OS.
But why does ease of use have to mean that Linux will loose the power and configurability that it now has? A great and easy user interface can easily be developed using the tools that we have already {the window manager, X, desktop environments). You still have the same flexibility and power that you had before, you just have it set up so that it is easy for your average user.
While this isn't exactly what they are doing, it does show that a good user interface doesn't necessarily "dumb down" the program. All of the features that were once there are still in place, its just that it has been covered with thin candy shell that won't melt in your hand (or more specfically the hands of those who haven't been exposed to them before, thus saving them from those funky colors that will appear on your hand if you hold them for too long.... but I digress)
I know that users who know enough can turn off (or just not install) usability features, but my concern is for users who -don't- know enough. I am of the opinion that the fault is less in the hands of the developers and more in the hands of the educators.
Now the only problem in this is that many people would not read the documentation that would be produced, no matter how well written or easy to find it is. They would much prefer to have someone come over and fix the problem for them, as they either lack the time to figure out the problem by themselves or lack the courage to try it themselves. One way that a good UI helps the process is by making it so obvious what to do that there is no doubt in the minds of the user, which is where much the difficulty in designing a UI comes into play.
I guess that's where it all comes down to though, finding a way to balance the strength of linux in its speed and flexibility with the ease-of-use that is required for new users to be able to use the system. A problem much easier spoken about than actual solved.
I always thought that Beta came out first. However, from what I remember they did a really bad job licensing out the technology. Thus, as VHS grew because there were more people making VHS recorders, rather than just Sony for Beta, more people bought VHS machines and thus the demand for VHS shot through the roof while the tecnologically superior Beta found no user base...
If this new tape format turns out to be better, and they aren't really dumb about licensing, they could have a winner on their hands. It doesn't matter if they come out with DVD-R machines, tape will have its place. The advent of the CD-R did not totally destroy the use of tapes, it just provided another way to record. While tapes are definitly about dead in the audio realm for original sales, people are still quite fond of using them for recording.
Just imagine if someone figured out a way to put mp3's on tape and provided a way to read them I'm sure that people would buy them. While you don't get the advantage of skipping tracks, you can fit alot on there.
The reason radio stations pay royalties is because they broadcast music to people who haven't purchased the shiny metal discs.
Sorry about that, I hit the wrong button before I got back to rephrase that. While I admit that the radio station example is not the best in the world, it does have a bit of merit. Radio stations trasmit songs to both people who have purchased the music and who haven't. They make their money off the advertising rather than by the transmition of the song.
Now, my.mp3.com makes money in much the same way, except for the difference that they have some membership requirements (such as the prior purchase of the disk and net access). The real money that mp3.com, at least from my judgement, comes from advertising rather than any other source. Thus they are making money off someone elses intellectual property by making their own copy (ala the radio station making acopy to be trasmitted across the radio waves) and giving it to other people.
Now, as far as the "nitpicky" statement. I say that it is nitpicky because I don't agree with it. However, I am able to recognize its legal significance. According to the laws we have right now, at least from my non-professional or even really legally educted mind, there is a definite legal difference between what mp3.com does and what myplay.com does. Whether or not I agree with the way the law satands right now is beside the point.
In view of RIAA's willingness to attack mp3.com for using a method that's more secure than its competitors, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to every other file-storage system, I'd then tell RIAA's lawyers that the next time they set foot in my courtroom, they'd better be prepared to defend themselves against charges of barratry.
Again, I thik this comes back to having a legal argument to stand on. They are able to attack mp3.com because of how they did it. There must have been sufficient legal precidence to make the RIAA think they could win here, and I think it has alot to do with the legal structure under which radio stations operate.
The reasont that we haven't seen anyone attack any of the other file-storage systems again comes back to how they implement the system. By having the users upload their files, myplay.com is not responsible for anything but the storage and thus doens't get into trouble on these same grounds. While being "precisely the same threat" (a fact which I completely agree with), they have done it in a manner by which the RIAA hasn't figured out a way to fight yet.
LIke I said before, I think there needs to be alot of work done to redefine IP to fit with the changing medium, but nobody really seems willing to do it (either because the people who gain from it don't want to mess with it, or because the RIAA just wants to repress it rather than figure out how to use it to their advantage).
It should make no fscking difference whether MP3.COM does the ripping and asks you to prove you own the CD, or if myplay.com requires the end user to do the ripping and upload the MP3.
Actually, this would make a big difference if you look at it this way. A radio station buys a CD from the record company in order to play it on the air. Whenever it plays this CD, or a song on that CD, it pays royalties to the record company for the privilege to play the song.
Now, mp3.com has you prove that you bought the CD, then allows you to listen to.mp3's that they ripped. Then you are allowed to play this music from the site (w/o paying royalties). While they have checked to see if you own this music, they are in effect acting like the radio station by playing the music that you want. The key is that they are providing you with their copy of the music.
On the other hand, myplay.com makes you upload music that you have already ripped. You are allowed to manage and play your.mp3's, but all that myplay does is provide a place to store, rather than the service of shifting medium. To tie this in with the above, you are playing your copy of the music rather than theirs.
As far as I can tell, this is really where the problem lies. My.mp3.com provides with a copy that they made and myplay.com uses your copy. This may seem rather nitpicky, but it makes a big difference in the legal sense.
Now, as far as the IP law being rather inconsistent. That is another question. In my opinion, the law needs to be revamped in a serious way to deal with the new issues that have been brought up by these sort of cases. All that has happened so far, at least from what I can see is that the judge decided that they could differentiate between digital copies, and from that technically who owns them (and thus distribution can be regulated.
This was not necessarily true for the whole of Italy, as the whole of Italy was not occupied by the Etruscans before the Romans began their rise to power. The languages spoken in the countryside were probably most dependent on who their were. The Volscans spoke an Volsci dialect, the Etruscans spoke Etruscan, etc, etc....
The one point here that is very worth making is that the Etruscan language was actually quite different from Latin (at least from my recollection), while the other languages in the area (usually designated as Latium, hence Latin) were quite related and tended to be different dialects of the same language. One way to show this is that Cicero was from Arpinum, which was considered Volscan territory, and he is considered by many to be the best Roman orator ever (very debated, but the most scholarship has been done on him).
Etruscan was spoken in the area to the north of Rome for the most part and extended up into the Po valley, whereas the Italic group (or Latin style group) contained the vast majority of Italy.
> The first was Greek which was the real language > spoken by the Roman Empire.
First of all, Greek was not the de facto spoken language of the Roman empire. It all depended on who you were and where you lived. The language of buisiness in the Eastern half of the empire was indeed in Greek (as the Greeks had been there long before and their influence still existed at that point). However, the Western half of the empire spoke almost exclusively Latin as there was no Lingua Franca over there, and Latin filled in quite nicely.
Greek's place in the Roman empire was very interesting, as it was the language of the educated (aka the Lingua Franca). Anybody who was anybody in repubublican politics studied Greek and the great orators. However, if you gave a speech in the Senate, you most likely used Latin (little conversations aside). It is also interesting to note that when Julius Caesar was assassinated, his last words to Brutus were ('kai su teknon' = 'and you child?') as reported by Suetonius, rather than the 'et tu Brute' reported by Shakespeare.
By the time you get to imperial times, you get more use of Latin, especially as anti-Greek sentiments rose. I'm not sure, but once you get beyond the first couple of emperors I doubt much Greek was spoken at all (especially when you get emperors coming from Spain and the like).
Basically, what happened here can be viewed as a switch between the Lingua Franca's of the time. Greek was the Lingua Franca during the years of the Roman Republic, but the fall of the Republic can be almost viewed as the rising of Latin to the heights that Greek had once attained. Latin then went on to be very popular among the educated for a very long time (helped out a tad by the Catholic Church).
I think this article served as a little tidbit into the ideals of project Guttenburg. First off and foremost, there seems to be dispute about the validity of some of the texts, and the amount of errors thererin.
The choice of books to be included in the project is made by the people involved in the project, Hart has no say in this and will do everything within his power to avoid suggesting a book for you to work on, he serves more as an administrator of the whole project, keeping it working and from falling off the ends of the earth.
Secondly, the prospective texts are passed through the hands of multiple editors in an attempt to get rid of the most of these errors. The goal is for the text to be as completely free of errors as possible (I seem to recall a reference to 99.9% free of errors in a few places). However, the amount of errors is again left to the editors and the creators of the text, and not upon Hart himself.
I think the largest issue facing the project, which was not brought up by the article, is the proposed extension of copyrights for 25 more years I beleive it is. If this were the case, then things would not be entering the public domain for a much longer period of time, thus decreasing the amount of material available to the project and preventing some very important works of literature from making their way into the public domain!!!
OK, I think my little idealistic rant is over now...
OK, I now I'm really begining to wonder. One of the pages that was censored was 75k of latin (at least according to the description). Well, being a latin major I was intrigued and decided to check this out. It turns out that this is part of the Confessions of St. Augustine, perhaps one of the most famous theologans in christianity!!! The rest of the corpus is located in the same directory, but apparently not blocked either, but I still find it quite humorous that Symantech thinks St. Augustine to be worthy of censorship. Must be Calvanists and Lutherans, only plausible explanation.:-)
I think the meat of this problem is right along these lines. The laws tend to follow precedent which has been set before (damn trappings of common law) and I think that E-commerce would most likely follow the ideals of mail-order catalogues.
An internet site could simply be viewed as an alternative form of the mail-order system, where you have a central warehouse (or warehouses) to store goods, then you get people to call in to you and have you ship the goods out to them. In E-commerce, you have the goods in a central warehouse and have people access you through the internet in order to place their order and then you ship it out to them. The framework is basically the same and it is simply a matter of different means of placing the order.
In the mail-order world, if I recall correctly, the sales tax is placed on orders placed within the same state, I don't see a problem if the taxation system for the internet went along these lines, as it follows an earlier precedent rather well (being that the means aren't changed too much). This way you keep in state sales being taxed, but the overall benefit of out-of-state and international sales still keeps its tax-free status (a best of both worlds if you will), while it sucks for those people in those states, it works well overall.
However, what they seem to be proposing is an overall taxation on buisiness over the internet, and that brings up many more questions and problems. The biggest of these, at least in my opinion, seems to be a simple matter of jurisidiciton.
If the United States says that states can impose a sales tax on internet sales, what jurisdiction would it go under? If you put it under a state's jurisdiction, you are setting an ugly precedent that the internet is in effect 'governed' or 'owned' by that state and then you have set yourself up for other legislation on regulating the internet. In this situation you would have problems as to what state to give it to, thus it would most likely lead to it falling under federal jurisdiction, which gives the government a foothold for legislating on and regulating the internet.
This then leads to the next step, once the federal government has a foothold, then the Unites States could attempt to regulate the whole network, bringing up the locality issue, can we control the actions on the internet of someone who lives in another country? One would immediatly say no, but its possible to go this direction. Perhaps an overall governing body would have to be set up, possibly it could go to the UN (but then what about countries not in the UN?), suddenly giving it a tax base (an interesting concept).
Now these ideas admittedly are a bit far fetched as well as steeped in a bit of conspiracy theory (since the circle of 7 would be the ones implemented all of this), but its amazing what can happen once precedent is set.
So to summarize what I'm trying to say in this rather long winded post. I think a tax system based on that of the mail order system would be OK, whereas a general tax on everything that the companies sell is bad.
For quite some time the RIAA has been telling us that mp3 is destroying its revenue base due to illegal pirating... this data could possibly throw a kink into that argument, but I'm not going to be so compulsive as to say that for sure (though I would like to).
Now we must admit that this really does bring up some of the philosophical debates of.mp3's and piracy. I mean, if in an age where piracy is rampant and no user who has access to use an mp3 would ever go out and buy a CD (at least according to the worst rhetoric of the RIAA), then this data is apparently an anomoly and we should just ignore it.
Personally, I think this is a great way to point out that mp3's do not actually stop the purchasing of CD's, but rather promote them in the sample-before-you-buy theory. Technically we could sit around in music shops, listening to each and every CD we can get our hands on (if you happen to have one of those nice CD shops around) to see what we like, or perhaps we can just go online in the comfort of our own home and check out some stuff that other people have recommended to us, or that we have found by happenstance (the same thing that we would do in the record shop, except we can do this at 2:00am, when insomnia rears its ugly head). While the record company will obviously lose some money from people having nothing but pirated music, the overall purchasing of the music could be stimulated by the existance of mp3s.
There is, however, the other point to bring up. Music sales have increased because the economy is booming and people are just out there spending more money, most of whom have no idea what an mp3 actually is and wouldn't know how to operate a computer in order to use them in the first place.
Then again, there is the thought that they are using Britany Spears to spread subliminal messages hidden in her artificial bustline to get more adolescent kids to buy stuff...;-)
But, back to the subject, I don't know what the numbers were from last year, at least I don't remember them being mentioned in the article), so I can't completely compare these ideas (and then again, how can someone truly proove an idea such as this.... but I digress). However, the data leads me to beleive that mp3 isn't the evil that the RIAA makes it out to be (NB - I didn't beleive them in the first place), or so the numbers would have us beleive...
I will grant that there is a definite Orwellian aspect to this, but lets not all go overboard. What I see here is a program that simply acts like a filter, cutting through the mundane crap of everyday existance and bringing out things that could POSSIBLY need to be noticed. For example, you decide oneday while waiting for a train, that you need to play airplane and fly around the landing for about 5 minutes to pass the time; then a program notes this fact, a brings it up to the attention of some poor person who has the job of going through all of these things, he sees you acting like a fool and laughs, then goes on to the next bit of buisiness... whats the difference between this and some person walking up the stairs, laughing at you and walking away?
The only problems with this come when you get the sort of thought-crime aspect that comes from 1984. And this has only to do with ethics, however, if someone is expending energy already to watch me do really dumb things, then more power to them, now they can do it easier than before. Now I may be wrong, and many people would tell me I'm wrong, but I don't think that anybody would really care if I'm acting like a nut, playing airplane while awaiting my train. Oh no, the caught me acting like a fool... gosh darn.... However, I can also see where this technology would come in handy for voyeurs; I mean, change a few heuristics, and you don't have to put any effort into it at all....:)
The only way I can see the Caesar reference is more along the lines of Augustus Caesar rather than Julius Caesar, but that all depends on how this is written out in the next couple of episodes.
Julius Caesar commited the actions necessary to bring the Republic to its knees, but his actions were forced. I see nothing that shows Palpatine's actions as forced, it seems to me as if he is actively moving towards power. Palpatine implements his schemes, and most people are on his side. Rather than C. Caesar who basically did what he did because his hand was forced (well, sorta anyway).
I can see Palpatine being much more of an Octavian (Augustus) Caesar. Palpatine positions himself into a place where they have no choice but to give power to him. However, there is the little fact that Augustus wasn't evil (relative sense). But in this case, Augustus didn't cause the events which lead to his rise to power. He was only able to do so because the Senators killed J. Caesar, leaving a HUGE power void, which he aptly filled.
I think I would agree with the earlier comments on this part, that Palpatine is much closer to Hitler than any of the Caesars. However, as I said before, it all depends on how Lucas/Brooks write the rest of the episodes.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll, we've been hearing about the United States governments actions in regards to the monitoring of email (the carnivore system, etc), and now its about the right time for the rest of the world to come in a bit too. It does look as if all governments are taking it upon themselves to monitor email for "illegal activity" which brings up some interesting questions.
Why do governments beleive that email is different than snail mail? Is it because its easier to use, or just easier for them to read? I'm not quite sure, I tend to think that they are treating it like phone lines because they can, not because of any sort of precedent. You can't open up a snail mail letter because of the envelope and people would know you're reading it, but you can easily tap a phone line, as its not as easy to detect the intrusion of privacy. Email follows the path of the phone line, but its just easier, as they can just intercept it before it gets there, and there is really no way for anyone to know if they've read it. I guess this is quite obvious material...
While I have nothing to hide in my emails, I guess its just starting to piss me off that all the governments of the world are starting to take their turns reading my email just in case I might be a terrorist threat. Seriously now, how many terrorist organisations would be dumb enough to not encrypt their emails that they send to each other, its ludicrous. I for one am going to start encrypting everything just to piss of the government...
If enough people would do this sort of thing, it would be impractical for the government to do this sort of thing, and hopefully it will just go away.
When I first looked at this, I responded in the typical, "hell yeah!!" manner as my privacy was being compromised. However, there are some other questions to think about on this matter. While I haven't gone out and looked at all of the policies or read this legislation yet, I immediatly question this policy to block all electronic access to medical records. Which seems to me to be a bit of overkill and quite ludicrous.
This is a very sticky topic that could get ugly. While I don't want the obvious infractions that have happened and could happen, I would like it alot if I'm brought into an ER and that hospital would be able to access my medical records and find out if I'm allergic to a medication that they are about to inject me with. Personally, I find this to be a good thing, so I would want them to be able to access this very quickly and not have to wait a couple of days (by which time it would most likely be too late) to get the records.
I'm thinking that a combination some new policy with the old policy would be in order. If I remember correctly, as of now people need to get written permission to get into your records (non electronic), why not combine this with the new digital signature policy that is coming through, that way you can get almost instantanious access with the privacy policy still in place.
The only problem here is that it still doesn't solve the "coming into the ER" problem as they would have to get your permission first, but something tells me that they have policies in place for that right now, and they could just adapt a little bit (such as, if you are incapable of giving permission and they need the info and fast, they will assume you give permission... a little bit of privacy lost, but in my opinion, for a good cause).
I guess I might just be missing something, but why is flashline.com interested in this endeavor at all, except for the obvious advertising? Unless they somehow developed some of the software associated with the project, my guess is that they are just footing a good portion of the bill in order to have their name thrown on a tarp around the igloo or something like that.
Are we starting to see a new era here in scientific research? While you are able to get some money from good ole Uncle Sam, in order to do anything really cool you have to get someone to sponsor you and then agree to wear their logo?
I can see both a good and a bad associated with this type of sponsorship. While you are going to more money from private sources in order to do some really cool things, isn't this going to end up like ancient Rome, where people were only willing to foot the bill for really big and cool things that people would always see rather than the essentials. For instance, it was very popular to build a theater in the Roman world, and the rich people would gladly dole out the cash to build one of those as people would go there and associate their name with it. However, you didn't see people lining up to spend money on the roads (well, sometimes, but usually not), nor for basic infastructural needs of the cities. Sometimes even when the did this, they made very shoddy but large buildings, so the people were impressed, until the damn thing fell down and killed a bunch of people.
What I'm getting at here, is that this gives the possibility that the only things that are going to get funded are the sexy projects, like a mission to Mars rather than others which may have more actual value to people but have much less sex appeal (my mind is failing on these right now, but for the sake of argument, we'll throw out diabetes research, as i don't recall having heard much about that lately).
Just to be clear, I don't have anything completely against corporate sponsorship of research projects, as its giving some funding to a great project. However, I wonder at the precedent that its setting and the consequences that we will see from it. Though we may not see them right away, they may show up sometime in the future.
There are many other reasons that India could be looking to send stuff to the moon other than just the same old scientific reasons that have been brought up in the article and in the various threads that I have seen.
First off, India is in need of some serious PR in their favour. While many people on their side in the Pakistan vs. India debacle, they need something to bolster the spirits of their people and make others think about them as more than just a country with a crapload of people and a few nuclear weapons. What better than a mission to the moon to proove themselves better than these other fledgling countries in the technological areas?
Also, as the country is in some serious tension over the nuclear arms issue, the fallover effect of technology in this area could be quite useful to them. After all, new rocket techology could allow them to create missles that could carry a nuclear warhead much farther than before, thus making other countries who were thinking about backing Pakistan much more wary in their support.
I'll admit that this is a very dark view of the reasons for going to the moon, but they are things that should be taken into consideration when you look at their motives. With motives like these, the Indian government will be much more willing to throw money at this project, whether it is something that they should be doing (as they could push that money into things that are needed much more than the new knowledge that this mission would probably bring -- but thats just the humanitarian hippy in me coming out).
Well, I hate to say that I saw this one coming from a mile away, but back when the judgement first came in, I noted that this was most likely going to be handled like a radio station
Initial post
and the follow up which clarifies the position a little bit
Unfortunatly, in this case, I would have to agree with the RIAA, as mp3.com was making money off of their intellectual property without paying up. This is where sites that have you rip your own mp3's get away with it, since you are using your own copy (which will most likely differ digitally -- at least to some small degree). The only small analogy I can think of is if you made a tape of a CD and played it for yourself versus someone else making a tape and playing it for you.
The whole point of getting rid of non-free is to move Debian closer to its goal of being a completely free distribution. Many people (both in Debian, and in Slashdot, and in other places) have brought up the fact that this move would basically compromise Debian's position as a viable distribution, as it would remove many packages that are quite usefull for which viable and free alternatives have not been developed.
Personally, I think that this move is a little bit ahead of its time. While many of these packages are in production, they aren't finished to a point where Debian would be weakened by their subsitution. Thus it would be in the best interest of the distribution (and its user base) to keep non-free and adopt a different plan. I see a couple of different options
Overall, I would say that a motion in the middle would be the best, as it would move them slower to their goal so as not to upset the user base, which would be in their best interest. And I must add the disclaimer, that I am a Debian user, but not a maintainer.
But why does ease of use have to mean that Linux will loose the power and configurability that it now has? A great and easy user interface can easily be developed using the tools that we have already {the window manager, X, desktop environments). You still have the same flexibility and power that you had before, you just have it set up so that it is easy for your average user.
While this isn't exactly what they are doing, it does show that a good user interface doesn't necessarily "dumb down" the program. All of the features that were once there are still in place, its just that it has been covered with thin candy shell that won't melt in your hand (or more specfically the hands of those who haven't been exposed to them before, thus saving them from those funky colors that will appear on your hand if you hold them for too long.... but I digress)
Now the only problem in this is that many people would not read the documentation that would be produced, no matter how well written or easy to find it is. They would much prefer to have someone come over and fix the problem for them, as they either lack the time to figure out the problem by themselves or lack the courage to try it themselves. One way that a good UI helps the process is by making it so obvious what to do that there is no doubt in the minds of the user, which is where much the difficulty in designing a UI comes into play.
I guess that's where it all comes down to though, finding a way to balance the strength of linux in its speed and flexibility with the ease-of-use that is required for new users to be able to use the system. A problem much easier spoken about than actual solved.
I always thought that Beta came out first. However, from what I remember they did a really bad job licensing out the technology. Thus, as VHS grew because there were more people making VHS recorders, rather than just Sony for Beta, more people bought VHS machines and thus the demand for VHS shot through the roof while the tecnologically superior Beta found no user base...
If this new tape format turns out to be better, and they aren't really dumb about licensing, they could have a winner on their hands. It doesn't matter if they come out with DVD-R machines, tape will have its place. The advent of the CD-R did not totally destroy the use of tapes, it just provided another way to record. While tapes are definitly about dead in the audio realm for original sales, people are still quite fond of using them for recording.
Just imagine if someone figured out a way to put mp3's on tape and provided a way to read them I'm sure that people would buy them. While you don't get the advantage of skipping tracks, you can fit alot on there.
Sorry about that, I hit the wrong button before I got back to rephrase that. While I admit that the radio station example is not the best in the world, it does have a bit of merit. Radio stations trasmit songs to both people who have purchased the music and who haven't. They make their money off the advertising rather than by the transmition of the song.
Now, my.mp3.com makes money in much the same way, except for the difference that they have some membership requirements (such as the prior purchase of the disk and net access). The real money that mp3.com, at least from my judgement, comes from advertising rather than any other source. Thus they are making money off someone elses intellectual property by making their own copy (ala the radio station making acopy to be trasmitted across the radio waves) and giving it to other people.
Now, as far as the "nitpicky" statement. I say that it is nitpicky because I don't agree with it. However, I am able to recognize its legal significance. According to the laws we have right now, at least from my non-professional or even really legally educted mind, there is a definite legal difference between what mp3.com does and what myplay.com does. Whether or not I agree with the way the law satands right now is beside the point.
Again, I thik this comes back to having a legal argument to stand on. They are able to attack mp3.com because of how they did it. There must have been sufficient legal precidence to make the RIAA think they could win here, and I think it has alot to do with the legal structure under which radio stations operate.
The reasont that we haven't seen anyone attack any of the other file-storage systems again comes back to how they implement the system. By having the users upload their files, myplay.com is not responsible for anything but the storage and thus doens't get into trouble on these same grounds. While being "precisely the same threat" (a fact which I completely agree with), they have done it in a manner by which the RIAA hasn't figured out a way to fight yet.
LIke I said before, I think there needs to be alot of work done to redefine IP to fit with the changing medium, but nobody really seems willing to do it (either because the people who gain from it don't want to mess with it, or because the RIAA just wants to repress it rather than figure out how to use it to their advantage).
Actually, this would make a big difference if you look at it this way. A radio station buys a CD from the record company in order to play it on the air. Whenever it plays this CD, or a song on that CD, it pays royalties to the record company for the privilege to play the song.
Now, mp3.com has you prove that you bought the CD, then allows you to listen to .mp3's that they ripped. Then you are allowed to play this music from the site (w/o paying royalties). While they have checked to see if you own this music, they are in effect acting like the radio station by playing the music that you want. The key is that they are providing you with their copy of the music.
On the other hand, myplay.com makes you upload music that you have already ripped. You are allowed to manage and play your .mp3's, but all that myplay does is provide a place to store, rather than the service of shifting medium. To tie this in with the above, you are playing your copy of the music rather than theirs.
As far as I can tell, this is really where the problem lies. My.mp3.com provides with a copy that they made and myplay.com uses your copy. This may seem rather nitpicky, but it makes a big difference in the legal sense.
Now, as far as the IP law being rather inconsistent. That is another question. In my opinion, the law needs to be revamped in a serious way to deal with the new issues that have been brought up by these sort of cases. All that has happened so far, at least from what I can see is that the judge decided that they could differentiate between digital copies, and from that technically who owns them (and thus distribution can be regulated.
This was not necessarily true for the whole of Italy, as the whole of Italy was not occupied by the Etruscans before the Romans began their rise to power. The languages spoken in the countryside were probably most dependent on who their were. The Volscans spoke an Volsci dialect, the Etruscans spoke Etruscan, etc, etc....
The one point here that is very worth making is that the Etruscan language was actually quite different from Latin (at least from my recollection), while the other languages in the area (usually designated as Latium, hence Latin) were quite related and tended to be different dialects of the same language. One way to show this is that Cicero was from Arpinum, which was considered Volscan territory, and he is considered by many to be the best Roman orator ever (very debated, but the most scholarship has been done on him).
Etruscan was spoken in the area to the north of Rome for the most part and extended up into the Po valley, whereas the Italic group (or Latin style group) contained the vast majority of Italy.
> The first was Greek which was the real language > spoken by the Roman Empire.
First of all, Greek was not the de facto spoken language of the Roman empire. It all depended on who you were and where you lived. The language of buisiness in the Eastern half of the empire was indeed in Greek (as the Greeks had been there long before and their influence still existed at that point). However, the Western half of the empire spoke almost exclusively Latin as there was no Lingua Franca over there, and Latin filled in quite nicely.
Greek's place in the Roman empire was very interesting, as it was the language of the educated (aka the Lingua Franca). Anybody who was anybody in repubublican politics studied Greek and the great orators. However, if you gave a speech in the Senate, you most likely used Latin (little conversations aside). It is also interesting to note that when Julius Caesar was assassinated, his last words to Brutus were ('kai su teknon' = 'and you child?') as reported by Suetonius, rather than the 'et tu Brute' reported by Shakespeare.
By the time you get to imperial times, you get more use of Latin, especially as anti-Greek sentiments rose. I'm not sure, but once you get beyond the first couple of emperors I doubt much Greek was spoken at all (especially when you get emperors coming from Spain and the like).
Basically, what happened here can be viewed as a switch between the Lingua Franca's of the time. Greek was the Lingua Franca during the years of the Roman Republic, but the fall of the Republic can be almost viewed as the rising of Latin to the heights that Greek had once attained. Latin then went on to be very popular among the educated for a very long time (helped out a tad by the Catholic Church).
I think this article served as a little tidbit into the ideals of project Guttenburg. First off and foremost, there seems to be dispute about the validity of some of the texts, and the amount of errors thererin.
The choice of books to be included in the project is made by the people involved in the project, Hart has no say in this and will do everything within his power to avoid suggesting a book for you to work on, he serves more as an administrator of the whole project, keeping it working and from falling off the ends of the earth.
Secondly, the prospective texts are passed through the hands of multiple editors in an attempt to get rid of the most of these errors. The goal is for the text to be as completely free of errors as possible (I seem to recall a reference to 99.9% free of errors in a few places). However, the amount of errors is again left to the editors and the creators of the text, and not upon Hart himself.
I think the largest issue facing the project, which was not brought up by the article, is the proposed extension of copyrights for 25 more years I beleive it is. If this were the case, then things would not be entering the public domain for a much longer period of time, thus decreasing the amount of material available to the project and preventing some very important works of literature from making their way into the public domain!!!
OK, I think my little idealistic rant is over now...
OK, I now I'm really begining to wonder. One of the pages that was censored was 75k of latin (at least according to the description). Well, being a latin major I was intrigued and decided to check this out. It turns out that this is part of the Confessions of St. Augustine, perhaps one of the most famous theologans in christianity!!! The rest of the corpus is located in the same directory, but apparently not blocked either, but I still find it quite humorous that Symantech thinks St. Augustine to be worthy of censorship. Must be Calvanists and Lutherans, only plausible explanation. :-)
I think the meat of this problem is right along these lines. The laws tend to follow precedent which has been set before (damn trappings of common law) and I think that E-commerce would most likely follow the ideals of mail-order catalogues.
An internet site could simply be viewed as an alternative form of the mail-order system, where you have a central warehouse (or warehouses) to store goods, then you get people to call in to you and have you ship the goods out to them. In E-commerce, you have the goods in a central warehouse and have people access you through the internet in order to place their order and then you ship it out to them. The framework is basically the same and it is simply a matter of different means of placing the order.
In the mail-order world, if I recall correctly, the sales tax is placed on orders placed within the same state, I don't see a problem if the taxation system for the internet went along these lines, as it follows an earlier precedent rather well (being that the means aren't changed too much). This way you keep in state sales being taxed, but the overall benefit of out-of-state and international sales still keeps its tax-free status (a best of both worlds if you will), while it sucks for those people in those states, it works well overall.
However, what they seem to be proposing is an overall taxation on buisiness over the internet, and that brings up many more questions and problems. The biggest of these, at least in my opinion, seems to be a simple matter of jurisidiciton.
If the United States says that states can impose a sales tax on internet sales, what jurisdiction would it go under? If you put it under a state's jurisdiction, you are setting an ugly precedent that the internet is in effect 'governed' or 'owned' by that state and then you have set yourself up for other legislation on regulating the internet. In this situation you would have problems as to what state to give it to, thus it would most likely lead to it falling under federal jurisdiction, which gives the government a foothold for legislating on and regulating the internet.
This then leads to the next step, once the federal government has a foothold, then the Unites States could attempt to regulate the whole network, bringing up the locality issue, can we control the actions on the internet of someone who lives in another country? One would immediatly say no, but its possible to go this direction. Perhaps an overall governing body would have to be set up, possibly it could go to the UN (but then what about countries not in the UN?), suddenly giving it a tax base (an interesting concept).
Now these ideas admittedly are a bit far fetched as well as steeped in a bit of conspiracy theory (since the circle of 7 would be the ones implemented all of this), but its amazing what can happen once precedent is set.
So to summarize what I'm trying to say in this rather long winded post. I think a tax system based on that of the mail order system would be OK, whereas a general tax on everything that the companies sell is bad.
For quite some time the RIAA has been telling us that mp3 is destroying its revenue base due to illegal pirating... this data could possibly throw a kink into that argument, but I'm not going to be so compulsive as to say that for sure (though I would like to).
.mp3's and piracy. I mean, if in an age where piracy is rampant and no user who has access to use an mp3 would ever go out and buy a CD (at least according to the worst rhetoric of the RIAA), then this data is apparently an anomoly and we should just ignore it.
;-)
Now we must admit that this really does bring up some of the philosophical debates of
Personally, I think this is a great way to point out that mp3's do not actually stop the purchasing of CD's, but rather promote them in the sample-before-you-buy theory. Technically we could sit around in music shops, listening to each and every CD we can get our hands on (if you happen to have one of those nice CD shops around) to see what we like, or perhaps we can just go online in the comfort of our own home and check out some stuff that other people have recommended to us, or that we have found by happenstance (the same thing that we would do in the record shop, except we can do this at 2:00am, when insomnia rears its ugly head). While the record company will obviously lose some money from people having nothing but pirated music, the overall purchasing of the music could be stimulated by the existance of mp3s.
There is, however, the other point to bring up. Music sales have increased because the economy is booming and people are just out there spending more money, most of whom have no idea what an mp3 actually is and wouldn't know how to operate a computer in order to use them in the first place.
Then again, there is the thought that they are using Britany Spears to spread subliminal messages hidden in her artificial bustline to get more adolescent kids to buy stuff...
But, back to the subject, I don't know what the numbers were from last year, at least I don't remember them being mentioned in the article), so I can't completely compare these ideas (and then again, how can someone truly proove an idea such as this.... but I digress). However, the data leads me to beleive that mp3 isn't the evil that the RIAA makes it out to be (NB - I didn't beleive them in the first place), or so the numbers would have us beleive...
I will grant that there is a definite Orwellian aspect to this, but lets not all go overboard. What I see here is a program that simply acts like a filter, cutting through the mundane crap of everyday existance and bringing out things that could POSSIBLY need to be noticed. For example, you decide oneday while waiting for a train, that you need to play airplane and fly around the landing for about 5 minutes to pass the time; then a program notes this fact, a brings it up to the attention of some poor person who has the job of going through all of these things, he sees you acting like a fool and laughs, then goes on to the next bit of buisiness... whats the difference between this and some person walking up the stairs, laughing at you and walking away?
:)
The only problems with this come when you get the sort of thought-crime aspect that comes from 1984. And this has only to do with ethics, however, if someone is expending energy already to watch me do really dumb things, then more power to them, now they can do it easier than before. Now I may be wrong, and many people would tell me I'm wrong, but I don't think that anybody would really care if I'm acting like a nut, playing airplane while awaiting my train. Oh no, the caught me acting like a fool... gosh darn.... However, I can also see where this technology would come in handy for voyeurs; I mean, change a few heuristics, and you don't have to put any effort into it at all....
The only way I can see the Caesar reference is more along the lines of Augustus Caesar rather than Julius Caesar, but that all depends on how this is written out in the next couple of episodes.
Julius Caesar commited the actions necessary to bring the Republic to its knees, but his actions were forced. I see nothing that shows Palpatine's actions as forced, it seems to me as if he is actively moving towards power. Palpatine implements his schemes, and most people are on his side. Rather than C. Caesar who basically did what he did because his hand was forced (well, sorta anyway).
I can see Palpatine being much more of an Octavian (Augustus) Caesar. Palpatine positions himself into a place where they have no choice but to give power to him. However, there is the little fact that Augustus wasn't evil (relative sense). But in this case, Augustus didn't cause the events which lead to his rise to power. He was only able to do so because the Senators killed J. Caesar, leaving a HUGE power void, which he aptly filled.
I think I would agree with the earlier comments on this part, that Palpatine is much closer to Hitler than any of the Caesars. However, as I said before, it all depends on how Lucas/Brooks write the rest of the episodes.