I like it. Someone has got the balls to point out that RIAA or no, theft from the artist is still theft.
There are two weak spots in your post though. First of all, the easy one:
"If you make a copy, that is theft - pure and simple - you have taken something which is not yours."
This is true in many cases, but is not a given. If I make a tape from a CD which I've purchased, so I can listen to it in the car, it is not theft. If I make a compilation of all the songs Martha Wainright has recorded (on the McGarrigles' CD, on Dan Bern's CD, and on her own), and I own all of the CDs I'm copying from, it is not theft. The artists, the RIAA, and the legal system all agree on this.
The other problem is that copy protection and so forth have not helped the artists--they've made money for the recording industry execs. Consider as a similar (not identical, I know) case in Canada right now. We just had a levy put on all blank media purchases to pay for illegal copying costs. Any of this levy that actually gets through the mill goes to the artists, based on total sales! In other words, Celine Dion gets a few buckets more money, the small artists get roughly nothing, and the tiny independent artists have to _pay_ extra for the blank media to record their original music!
Copy protection has historically done just as well at rewarding the artists. This is why I have recommended that anyone who copies a CD (or tape, or whatever) that they haven't bought should voluntarily mail five bucks or so directly to the artist. THEY'RE the ones who deserve it!
OK folks. It was said the other day, it was said today, and now I'll say it again.
If you're going to show up in person to show your support, dress reasonably, be polite, and impress the hell out of anyone expecting a bunch of ranting nerds. A professional and mature show of support will go far in convincing the people that need convincing that this is a legitimate concern, brought forth by respectable and law abiding citizens. (and consumers to boot)
Hee, hee! I get a kick out of seeing journalists from different areas putting different slants on a story.
Take a good look at these: "With Gateway, Amino [now Amiga Coporation] and probably others able to produce this type of machine, this could possibly be the fatal blow to MS that many have been waiting for." -- Wayne A. Martin, News Manager, Amiga.org
"The bottom line of this proposed deal is nothing more than crass commercialism. What a huge advertising coup this is for Bob Pittman of AOL, he must be drooling at the thought of how to put AOL's nefarious 'pop-up' ads on CNN and print via Time magazine." (and...) "...no company should be allowed to own the content as well as the conduit." -- Brock Meeks, MSNBC correspondent
"Here's a reason to fear AOL's control. AOL blocked delivery for the last edition of the AOL Watch newsletter." -- David Cassel, Editor, AolWatch Newsletter
"There is absolutely nothing in Steve Case's background that suggests he is particularly well-equipped to lead a new kind of unimaginably complex media conglomerate into the 21st century, and Wall Street analysts who are so blinded by the hype surrounding this deal that they fail to consider it carefully are likely to be sorry." (and...) "Is individualism, free expression, diverse opinion advanced when the information economy breaks down into two or three "old and new" media conglomerates that control virtually all of the archived news and entertainment information online, and increasingly, the means to deliver it?" -- Jon Katz, Slashdot Columnist
So in other words, the Amiga guy sees this as a blow to MS in favour of Amiga. The MS-NBC (check those letters closely!) guy figures this is a dangerous and crass example of overcommercialisation. The AOLWatch guy is worried about AOL threatening AOLWatch more effectively. And then there's JonKatz, who rants against any and all big business and asks rhetorical questions in stunningly long, convoluted sentences.
Bottom line, their biases are showing. Painfully.
While it's true that there's no such thing as an unbiased story, it's pretty sad when the so called "journalists" can't even pretend to look at the other side of an issue, let alone attempt to report on it fairly.
Of course, my biases are showing too; I hate bad journalism. Just ask yourself, whenever you read or watch a news story, does the article say more about the story itself or the journalist reporting it?
Does anyone remember when Netcom was sentenced with the UDP? (about two years ago maybe?) It was an almost identical situation, if I remember. Netcom refused (for ages!) to respond to any abuse complaints, and refused to lock down their servers. When the UDP was announced, they made some shuffling, 'we'll fix it' noises, but did roughly bugger-all. This went back and forth until the UDP was finally put into effect, with fairly devastating consequences. After a while, Netcom relented and started to behave.
I don't like the fact that these companies are so irresponsible that we have to take a big stick to 'em, but ultimately it will prove successful. I vaguely remember that it's easier to reinstate a UDP once it's been applied once, so any number of half-measures on @Home's part will fail. Responsible behaviour is the only way out of this.
OK, I'm a Katz basher, so I'll take a shot at answering.
Katz consistently posts emotive, inflammatory, nearly content-free fluff. He'll go on and on about whatever cause he's promoting (invariably anti-business), getting people riled up but without actually saying anything. This is activism, not journalism. This article is a prime example; he fails to grasp either the meaning or the mechanics of anti-trust law, but has decided that since the AOL/Time-Warner merger is really big, they should be stopped by virtue of being a monopoly. That's not how it works.
The there's the issue that his articles are much longer than they should be for the points he's trying to make. His writing style is excessively wordy.
Finally, the crux of the matter; JonKatz is (technically speaking) a professional journalist. He gets paid to be a journalist, and so should be held to a higher standard than, for instance, a bunch of geeks who run a "news for nerds" website. In reality, he's not reaching their standard.
Blah blah blah, once again.
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 1
Gee, JonKatz gets to hobnob (and not just that, but be ASKED FOR COMMENTS BY!!!) ABC and the Boston Globe. How exciting! How worthy he is, and how unworthy the rest of us poor plebians are to grovel at his feet.
Oh, and there was some other, less important stuff about corporate mergers and so forth.
Once again, the guy just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand US monopoly law, and doesn't even understand what a monopoly is. If you happen to be reading this Jon, repeat after me: A monopoly isn't just a very large company. Ever looked at who owns NBC? I'll give you a hint: They're now known as MSNBC. Other media? Oh, I'm sure there are one or two stations around that people watch. (and similarly with online content providers)
I don't like this merger. However, calling it a monopoly is just stupid, and suggesting that monopolies are illegal is really REALLY stupid! Once again, I wonder why/. bothers with JonKatz, except maybe for the comic relief.
I just finished rereading "The Cuckoo's Egg" for the umteenth time. Allow me to quote from one of the last chapters:
"In a small town, where people never locked their doors, would we praise the first burglar for showing the townspeople how foolish it was to leave their houses open? After it happened, the town couldn't ever go back to open doors."
I'm a huge proponent of (relatively) secure systems, but I don't give any more credit to the criminals who break into insecure systems than I do the criminals who break into stores without surveillance equipment. Both should be locked up. Period.
Say what you will about the FCC, and some of their silly decisions in the past. On the whole, this guy seems to 'get it.' Consider this summary of his speech;
1) The industry has not been working for the consumer. 2) The industry has been working for their own ends. 3) By working towards their own ends, the industry hasn't developed any followed standards. 4) By working towards their own ends, the industry has harmed the consumer. 5) If the industry doesn't get off their asses ASAP, the FCC, backed by the US gov't, will kick said asses around, on behalf of the consumer.
This makes perfect sense to me (scary!). At work, while number crunching (or more accurately, database request processing) is important, most of the work done by the admins is to optimise the network and storage streams. (Which is better--multiple parallel SCSI connections to a disk array, or ESCON? Not an easy question to answer)
That said, it means that our clump of mid-range HP servers constitutes a supercomputer, which doesn't quite sit right with me. (K-class, not really. V-class, maybe)
"At least one of the names registered, microsoft-.com, involved a registered trademark, causing officials to speculate that allowing the dash mark could encourage cybersquatting.
Besides that possibility, Brian O'Shaughnessy, spokesperson for NSI, says having a dash at the end of the name "breaks" such Internet applications as ftp and telnet.
But Anthony La Forge, who registered e-.com, e-.org, and e-.net for his Iowa-based business, calls O'Shaughnessy's claims "a convenient excuse" and says he hopes ICANN's decision can be appealed.
"Finding another name will be extremely inconvenient," said La Forge. "Domains that are that short are extremely expensive and hard to come by."
So this guy registered e-.net and e-.com, and now calls a violation of the RFCs a 'convenient excuse.' He also is determined to somehow find other VERY short names which speak not of his business type or company name, but of generic "e-commerce."
My gut feeling (from two or three sentences) is that this guy is out to make a quick buck however he can, doesn't understand bugger all about the internet, and is probably a shady businessman.
I know that I'll be careful not to deal with any company owned by Anthony La Forge, of Iowa.
Is there a formal definition of "supercomputer" out there? In my mind, I equate supercomputer with mainframe, which kinda messes with this article. Anyone got a good definition?
It's kind of nice when truly prestigous awards (like the Turing, unlike the Oscars) get awarded to people who deserve them (like the Turing winners, unlike the Oscar winners).
My hat is off to the man. As someone who used to work in a protein engineering lab, I was surprised to find that, "Brooks and his students built the first molecular graphics system on which a new protein structure was solved." This effectively makes him a pioneer in (at least!) two fields.
You've about got it, but there are a few other points to consider.
As a small investor with $1000 to invest, how many shares can you buy at $300? A whopping three shares. Now drop those shares to $50, and you can buy 20. More to the point, you can buy 5 of Sony, and still have money to buy other companies.
Trading volume tends to taper off once stocks hit ~$100US, and definitely begins to stagnate at $300. Splitting stocks is a good way of increasing the volume of stock traded, and tends to increase more than the split ratio. (i.e. if the stocks split 2:1, then the volume is probably going to be more than twice what it was before the split)
You'll notice a lot of "tends to" in that last paragraph. There are, of course, no hard and fast rules. (if there were, trading wouldn't be a risky venture:-) Still, "...the risky move will result in greater company value" is utter bullshit. It's not a risky move at all--it's just business.
Besides--Sony is a ***BIG*** company! The PS2 could vanish off the face of the earth, and Sony wouldn't be hurting much. This article was nothing but silly and unresearched BS.
We need a logical volume manager! Heinz Mauelshagen has written one (read about it here, and it appears to be stable. This has got to be part of the Linux core before using it in a large environment is reasonable. Those of us coming from other Unix backgrounds have been gritting our teeth at the lack of both a mature JFS AND an LVM.
The only way to get things done is to bring it to a large audience. ESR is a lightning rod of sorts. The media listens to him. He's written BOOKS!!!
So maybe he shouldn't get praise for saying the same things that we all said last week, but I'd say he deserves praise (or at least recognition) for bringing it forward to a greater (unconverted) audience. In an issue like this, that may be his biggest and most important role. No matter that the rest of us have already said it--the media doesn't listen to us!
A much better song to usher in the 2000s than Prince's stupid "1999", in my opinion.
Now that the afterlife has started for pretty much the whole world, things don't feel much different, but there's something downright weird about saying farewell to the 19xxs. It's like a door has closed. Hopefully, another one has opened as well.
Best wishes you/. folks. Hope all of your geekery is successful in the near and distant future.
"well, the example of a big huge internet worm strikes me as something which will probably happen. but it seems to me that m$ is probably thinking about it too... imagine if there just happened to be an outbreak of a linux worm?
Sure, but you're assuming that MS has the skill and expertise to write such a worm, bugfree, before releasing it.
Of course, geeks are as diverse as any large group. There are fundamentalist religious geeks, there are right-wing, gun-nut racist geeks, there are left-wing, shave-the-whales, peacelovedope geeks, and everything in between. However on the whole, most seem to be in the somewhat anti-corporate, left-leaning civil-rights region of the spectrum. Seattle in many ways is close to the ideal for the average geek.
Personally, I wouldn't mind it. Portland appeals more, as does San Diego. Of course, that assumes that I'm willing to head south again.
Slashdot Mirror
I like it. Someone has got the balls to point out that RIAA or no, theft from the artist is still theft.
There are two weak spots in your post though. First of all, the easy one:
"If you make a copy, that is theft - pure and simple - you have taken something which is not yours."
This is true in many cases, but is not a given. If I make a tape from a CD which I've purchased, so I can listen to it in the car, it is not theft. If I make a compilation of all the songs Martha Wainright has recorded (on the McGarrigles' CD, on Dan Bern's CD, and on her own), and I own all of the CDs I'm copying from, it is not theft. The artists, the RIAA, and the legal system all agree on this.
The other problem is that copy protection and so forth have not helped the artists--they've made money for the recording industry execs. Consider as a similar (not identical, I know) case in Canada right now. We just had a levy put on all blank media purchases to pay for illegal copying costs. Any of this levy that actually gets through the mill goes to the artists, based on total sales! In other words, Celine Dion gets a few buckets more money, the small artists get roughly nothing, and the tiny independent artists have to _pay_ extra for the blank media to record their original music!
Copy protection has historically done just as well at rewarding the artists. This is why I have recommended that anyone who copies a CD (or tape, or whatever) that they haven't bought should voluntarily mail five bucks or so directly to the artist. THEY'RE the ones who deserve it!
OK folks. It was said the other day, it was said today, and now I'll say it again.
If you're going to show up in person to show your support, dress reasonably, be polite, and impress the hell out of anyone expecting a bunch of ranting nerds. A professional and mature show of support will go far in convincing the people that need convincing that this is a legitimate concern, brought forth by respectable and law abiding citizens. (and consumers to boot)
But by all means, do show up if you can!
Hee, hee! I get a kick out of seeing journalists from different areas putting different slants on a story.
Take a good look at these:
"With Gateway, Amino [now Amiga Coporation] and probably others able to produce this type of machine, this could possibly be the fatal blow to MS that many have been waiting for." -- Wayne A. Martin, News Manager, Amiga.org
"The bottom line of this proposed deal is nothing more than crass commercialism. What a huge advertising coup this is for Bob Pittman of AOL, he must be drooling at the thought of how to put AOL's nefarious 'pop-up' ads on CNN and print via Time magazine."
(and...)
"...no company should be allowed to own the content as well as the conduit." -- Brock Meeks, MSNBC correspondent
"Here's a reason to fear AOL's control. AOL blocked delivery for the last edition of the AOL Watch newsletter." -- David Cassel, Editor, AolWatch Newsletter
"There is absolutely nothing in Steve Case's background that suggests he is particularly well-equipped to lead a new kind of unimaginably complex media conglomerate into the 21st century, and Wall Street analysts who are so blinded by the hype surrounding this deal that they fail to consider it carefully are likely to be sorry."
(and...)
"Is individualism, free expression, diverse opinion advanced when the information economy breaks down into two or three "old and new" media conglomerates that control virtually all of the archived news and entertainment information online, and increasingly, the means to deliver it?" -- Jon Katz, Slashdot Columnist
So in other words, the Amiga guy sees this as a blow to MS in favour of Amiga. The MS-NBC (check those letters closely!) guy figures this is a dangerous and crass example of overcommercialisation. The AOLWatch guy is worried about AOL threatening AOLWatch more effectively. And then there's JonKatz, who rants against any and all big business and asks rhetorical questions in stunningly long, convoluted sentences.
Bottom line, their biases are showing. Painfully.
While it's true that there's no such thing as an unbiased story, it's pretty sad when the so called "journalists" can't even pretend to look at the other side of an issue, let alone attempt to report on it fairly.
Of course, my biases are showing too; I hate bad journalism. Just ask yourself, whenever you read or watch a news story, does the article say more about the story itself or the journalist reporting it?
Does anyone remember when Netcom was sentenced with the UDP? (about two years ago maybe?) It was an almost identical situation, if I remember. Netcom refused (for ages!) to respond to any abuse complaints, and refused to lock down their servers. When the UDP was announced, they made some shuffling, 'we'll fix it' noises, but did roughly bugger-all. This went back and forth until the UDP was finally put into effect, with fairly devastating consequences. After a while, Netcom relented and started to behave.
I don't like the fact that these companies are so irresponsible that we have to take a big stick to 'em, but ultimately it will prove successful. I vaguely remember that it's easier to reinstate a UDP once it's been applied once, so any number of half-measures on @Home's part will fail. Responsible behaviour is the only way out of this.
But that's exactly what they said! Of course, PR cleaned it up and threw in the word "proactive."
OK, thanks for the clarification. The point still remains, though, that there's a substantial chunk of competition for the new merger.
OK, I'm a Katz basher, so I'll take a shot at answering.
Katz consistently posts emotive, inflammatory, nearly content-free fluff. He'll go on and on about whatever cause he's promoting (invariably anti-business), getting people riled up but without actually saying anything. This is activism, not journalism. This article is a prime example; he fails to grasp either the meaning or the mechanics of anti-trust law, but has decided that since the AOL/Time-Warner merger is really big, they should be stopped by virtue of being a monopoly. That's not how it works.
The there's the issue that his articles are much longer than they should be for the points he's trying to make. His writing style is excessively wordy.
Finally, the crux of the matter; JonKatz is (technically speaking) a professional journalist. He gets paid to be a journalist, and so should be held to a higher standard than, for instance, a bunch of geeks who run a "news for nerds" website. In reality, he's not reaching their standard.
Gee, JonKatz gets to hobnob (and not just that, but be ASKED FOR COMMENTS BY!!!) ABC and the Boston Globe. How exciting! How worthy he is, and how unworthy the rest of us poor plebians are to grovel at his feet.
/. bothers with JonKatz, except maybe for the comic relief.
Oh, and there was some other, less important stuff about corporate mergers and so forth.
Once again, the guy just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand US monopoly law, and doesn't even understand what a monopoly is. If you happen to be reading this Jon, repeat after me: A monopoly isn't just a very large company. Ever looked at who owns NBC? I'll give you a hint: They're now known as MSNBC. Other media? Oh, I'm sure there are one or two stations around that people watch. (and similarly with online content providers)
I don't like this merger. However, calling it a monopoly is just stupid, and suggesting that monopolies are illegal is really REALLY stupid! Once again, I wonder why
Pardon me, but fuck that noise...
I just finished rereading "The Cuckoo's Egg" for the umteenth time. Allow me to quote from one of the last chapters:
"In a small town, where people never locked their doors, would we praise the first burglar for showing the townspeople how foolish it was to leave their houses open? After it happened, the town couldn't ever go back to open doors."
I'm a huge proponent of (relatively) secure systems, but I don't give any more credit to the criminals who break into insecure systems than I do the criminals who break into stores without surveillance equipment. Both should be locked up.
Period.
Am I the ONLY one who read this positively?
Say what you will about the FCC, and some of their silly decisions in the past. On the whole, this guy seems to 'get it.' Consider this summary of his speech;
1) The industry has not been working for the consumer.
2) The industry has been working for their own ends.
3) By working towards their own ends, the industry hasn't developed any followed standards.
4) By working towards their own ends, the industry has harmed the consumer.
5) If the industry doesn't get off their asses ASAP, the FCC, backed by the US gov't, will kick said asses around, on behalf of the consumer.
Strikes me as a decent kind of guy.
I don't get it.
He says,
where the market does not work to promote consumer welfare, the Commission must.
and you say,
whatever happened to "protect the nations boundaries" and "protect the citizens' rights"."
It sounds to me that the Commission's mandate is exactly to 'protect the citizens' rights' when the market tries to abuse them.
This makes perfect sense to me (scary!). At work, while number crunching (or more accurately, database request processing) is important, most of the work done by the admins is to optimise the network and storage streams. (Which is better--multiple parallel SCSI connections to a disk array, or ESCON? Not an easy question to answer)
That said, it means that our clump of mid-range HP servers constitutes a supercomputer, which doesn't quite sit right with me. (K-class, not really. V-class, maybe)
"At least one of the names registered, microsoft-.com, involved a registered trademark, causing officials to speculate that allowing the dash mark could encourage cybersquatting.
Besides that possibility, Brian O'Shaughnessy, spokesperson for NSI, says having a dash at the end of the name "breaks" such Internet applications as ftp and telnet.
But Anthony La Forge, who registered e-.com, e-.org, and e-.net for his Iowa-based business, calls O'Shaughnessy's claims "a convenient excuse" and says he hopes ICANN's decision can be appealed.
"Finding another name will be extremely inconvenient," said La Forge. "Domains that are that short are extremely expensive and hard to come by."
So this guy registered e-.net and e-.com, and now calls a violation of the RFCs a 'convenient excuse.' He also is determined to somehow find other VERY short names which speak not of his business type or company name, but of generic "e-commerce."
My gut feeling (from two or three sentences) is that this guy is out to make a quick buck however he can, doesn't understand bugger all about the internet, and is probably a shady businessman.
I know that I'll be careful not to deal with any company owned by Anthony La Forge, of Iowa.
Is there a formal definition of "supercomputer" out there? In my mind, I equate supercomputer with mainframe, which kinda messes with this article. Anyone got a good definition?
It's kind of nice when truly prestigous awards (like the Turing, unlike the Oscars) get awarded to people who deserve them (like the Turing winners, unlike the Oscar winners).
My hat is off to the man. As someone who used to work in a protein engineering lab, I was surprised to find that, "Brooks and his students built the first molecular graphics system on which a new protein structure was solved." This effectively makes him a pioneer in (at least!) two fields.
So am I the only one here who went digging through the issues looking for the oft-hoped-for "POIT!"? One of the best parts of pre-pubescence.
1) You've never heard of Uruguay? Sister country to Paraguay?
/..
2) Some geeks understand that lawyers are occasionally necessary. Some of them are even good people! (But not "personal injury" lawyers)
3) Abuse is abuse. IP abuse is actionable, and something very near and dear to
4) The more obscure something is, the more geeks do like to talk about it.
Man pages. I want plain old, updated, current, man pages!
*sigh*
Oh well. Back to reality.
You've about got it, but there are a few other points to consider.
:-) Still, "...the risky move will result in greater company value" is utter bullshit. It's not a risky move at all--it's just business.
As a small investor with $1000 to invest, how many shares can you buy at $300? A whopping three shares. Now drop those shares to $50, and you can buy 20. More to the point, you can buy 5 of Sony, and still have money to buy other companies.
Trading volume tends to taper off once stocks hit ~$100US, and definitely begins to stagnate at $300. Splitting stocks is a good way of increasing the volume of stock traded, and tends to increase more than the split ratio. (i.e. if the stocks split 2:1, then the volume is probably going to be more than twice what it was before the split)
You'll notice a lot of "tends to" in that last paragraph. There are, of course, no hard and fast rules. (if there were, trading wouldn't be a risky venture
Besides--Sony is a ***BIG*** company! The PS2 could vanish off the face of the earth, and Sony wouldn't be hurting much. This article was nothing but silly and unresearched BS.
We need a logical volume manager! Heinz Mauelshagen has written one (read about it here, and it appears to be stable. This has got to be part of the Linux core before using it in a large environment is reasonable. Those of us coming from other Unix backgrounds have been gritting our teeth at the lack of both a mature JFS AND an LVM.
Yes, but...
The only way to get things done is to bring it to a large audience. ESR is a lightning rod of sorts. The media listens to him. He's written BOOKS!!!
So maybe he shouldn't get praise for saying the same things that we all said last week, but I'd say he deserves praise (or at least recognition) for bringing it forward to a greater (unconverted) audience. In an issue like this, that may be his biggest and most important role. No matter that the rest of us have already said it--the media doesn't listen to us!
...and I feel fine.
/. folks. Hope all of your geekery is successful in the near and distant future.
A much better song to usher in the 2000s than Prince's stupid "1999", in my opinion.
Now that the afterlife has started for pretty much the whole world, things don't feel much different, but there's something downright weird about saying farewell to the 19xxs. It's like a door has closed. Hopefully, another one has opened as well.
Best wishes you
"well, the example of a big huge internet worm strikes me as something which will probably happen. but it seems to me that m$ is probably thinking about it too... imagine if there just happened to be an outbreak of a linux worm?
:-)
Sure, but you're assuming that MS has the skill and expertise to write such a worm, bugfree, before releasing it.
Relax. That'll NEVER happen!
Of course, geeks are as diverse as any large group. There are fundamentalist religious geeks, there are right-wing, gun-nut racist geeks, there are left-wing, shave-the-whales, peacelovedope geeks, and everything in between. However on the whole, most seem to be in the somewhat anti-corporate, left-leaning civil-rights region of the spectrum. Seattle in many ways is close to the ideal for the average geek.
Personally, I wouldn't mind it. Portland appeals more, as does San Diego. Of course, that assumes that I'm willing to head south again.
Well, aside from the obvious (Legos!) there's always the obvious...
NERF GUNS!!!
(for those of us BOFHs who have run out of space for dead bodies)