This is incorrect. DeCSS is a WINDOWS PROGRAM to descramble and copy the files from a DVD to the hard drive. Once it's on the drive then it can be played back by just about anything (including linux, SCO, Solaris, etc.)
This is correct. DeCSS was written before the UDF filesystem existed for Linux. It was used in conjunction with WINE/Windows, to get access to a decrypted VOB file so that work on the Linux DVD player software could continue, and not be held up by the lack of native UDF support.
DeCSS was never intended, nor ever used, to pirate DVDs. The MPAA has even admitted as much - their argument is that it violates the DMCA because it gets around their encryption, and the innocence of the software's purpose and use is irrelevant. The MPAA will certainly win this round, with a corrupt judge presiding over the case despite numerous conflicts of interest, and they might possibly win the appeal as well (based on how the law is written). Of course, we're all hoping the appeals process overturns that portion of the law, but who can tell? The only forgone conclusion is that they will lose the current trial, primarilly because of a corrupt and ethically bankrupt judge.
Now Linux supports UDF just fine, and the linux version of DeCSS, css-auth, allows Linux users to decrypt and watch their DVDs. The players are maturing rapidly as well (if you've got a dual P3/600 they are arguably already there).
Amusing thought: imagine a feature for Gnutilla that found the cheapest price on any music product, using a search job efficiently distributed across all users. (It might also watch for price-fixing patterns on CD prices and report them to the FTC, just to annoy the RIAA).
I would willingly donate cpu cycles and hard drive space in support of an effort of this kind.
Much of the work the FBI does is simple data collection/correlation/analysis. Creating an open, public watchdog project to monitor the behavior of corporations, esp. with respect to price fixing, and put behind it the computational power of the internet, would be an exciting project.
The only downside is see: what happens if someone adopts said software to watch an individual. How does one insure their spare cpu cycles are used ethically?
Freedom is a precious thing, and has nothing to do with peculiar software licences dreamt up by barmy hippies.
Freedom is a precious thing, and it has everything to do with a peculiar software license.
Your inability to understand this may stem from a biweekly Microsoft check, an inflexible mindset, or outright stupidity, however, your inability to understand this makes it no less true.
Last I checked, you don't have to pull carrier pigeons or buffalo out of the ground.
To the previous poster: Give up.
This guy will never get it, and he'd rather have his teeth pulled out one by one than ever admit he's wrong.
When we do run out of oil in 20-40 years (the numbers I saw were 10-20, but that may have assumed SUV-quality gas milage, which most cars fortunately can better), he'll no doubt be saying "we could have had an infinite supply, if they'd just taken my advice and left some in the ground!"
He doesn't understand the extremes of supply and demand, where the incentives to deplete the last of the supply are tremendously high because of its scarcity and very high demand -- the financial incentives and profit margin are much, much higher, far outstripping any disincentives the additional cost to get the last of the resource might imply. This translates to everything from Art, to the Ivory trade, to minerals in mines, to oil. It is likely that the last of the oil will actually disappear faster, because the financial incentives to get it and cash in on it will be much, much greater than the high cost to extract it will be, and certainly much greater than incentives today.
I'm not a lawyer, but aren't judges prohibited from presiding in cases that they are not impartial on?
IANALE (IANAL either), however, since the only real check and balance in this situation is the judge's own personal honor, to voluntarily step back and let someone else preside over the case, the effective answer to your question is "No." In Kaplan's case, he has demonstraded quite clearly that he has no honor or integrity whatsoever.
As another noted, this will be decided on appeal. The results of this trial are a forgone conclusion, and quite probably already paid for in advance.
Perhaps Kaplan could be impeached for knowingly presiding over this case with such a flagrant conflict of interest, but judges almost never get impeached. Even judges who commit heinous acts, such as raping a woman in their courtroom (it has happened) are difficult to dislodge. Something as innocuous as denying the little guy justice in favor of a large corporate cartel doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting any public attention - a prerequisite to any kind of reparation or justice.
Less facetiously, I am wondering what Napster gets out of this.
One thing they get out of this is some serious ammunition in their ongoing court case against the RIAA Cartel.
The courts might be persuaded to ignore the rights of a legitimate company, if it is percieved to have a product which is primarily used for "illigetimate" purposes (this has happened before - Bong makers in some states, whos tobacco product is banned because most users use it for marijuana instead). However, if the company has a product with a clearly legitimate use, and an alliance with Hollywood is a pretty high profile "legitimate" use, the RIAA will likely be slam dunked for trying to strong arm them out of existence.
And if the deals with Hollywood prove to onerous, napster can withdraw after the trial is over.
It's not like they are accused of murder or spying or something.
No, they are accused of something far worse: being smarter than corporate AmeriCa and the government, and rubbing their collective nose in it.
Remember meatnik? He did more time than many rapists and murderers, and while he cracked a lot of systems and was privy to a lot of confidential information, he never actually stole a single penny. In addition, contrary to official Corporate Myth,[1] he never even caused any damage -- he simply revealed security flaws (which needed to be fixed regardless) in an inappropriate manner in order to feed his own information fetish.
I suspect that these crackers could expect the same level of justice, i.e. none to speak of.
[1]In the typical fashion of our times, lawyers and accountants are cooking up numbers claiming absurd damages because now they have to fix their broken security, as if leaving a safe unlocked and open, on a busy public street (or even an open private driveway) would be acceptable practice under any circumstance. "If the messanger is an annoying punk, shoot him" seems to be our credo these days.
(As an aside, I am aware of no cases applying the protections of a shield law to an Internet reporter, but none denying it either, the issue has not yet arisen in the courts.)
What is with the notion that an "internet reporter" is any different than a meatspace reporter?
The so-called "internet reporters" are physical people, not some sentient piece of software. As physical poeple, this makes them physical reporters, therefor the law should apply equally, qed. Or are we now assigning different laws to people of different professions, or who use different tools for the same profession?
Must we subscribe to the same flawed logic that allows a company (whome we won't mention *cough* Amazaon *cough*) to patent obvious activities, simply because they are being conducted on the net instead of in meatspace?
We do not need special laws for the internet, nor do we need special court cases and trials. Existing law is more than sufficient, perhaps even too much. We certainly do not need to keep adding feces to the pile.
And today, the same arguments are being made, about the same kind of people. "out of work, will take any job". And the previous poster, about people on welfare having more children. You people seriously need a better education.
I am extremely well educated, thank you.
Perhaps you should polish your reading skills. I said that there were economic incentives built into the welfare system that encourage those unable to provide for themselves to have more children, I did not anywhere in my post say that people on welfare were the only ones having more children. Taking various demographic groups, Mormons and Catholics are two other groups with prolific breeding habits which come to mind. Welfare recipients are a third group which does, on average, have more than the national average of 2.x children. AFAIK they are the only group receiving active, finanical incentives to do so.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that resulted in millions of cripples/gays/gypsies/jews being killed because they were considered to be weakening the gene pool by breeding faster and being a burden on society.
No, it isn't. Racial, ethnic, and social hatreds and prejudices led to the barbarism and genocide of world war II. Eugenics were merely a rhetorical point used in propoganda to promote the notion that such abominations were OK.
I'll say it again.
Breeding != Killing. Eugenics != Genocide.
Thank you though, for illustrating my point about "taboo subjects for discussion" so brilliantly. Your use of ad hominim attacks and comparisons to Nazis, as well as your predictable invocation of the holocaust, in an effort to silence even the discussion of Eugenics and human breeding patterns, implying that the very concepts and discussions themselves led directly to such an atrocity (which coudn't be further from the truth) couldn't have made a better example if I'd written it myself.
(And yes, once again I'm arguing a stance I don't really agree with, because I agree with your effort to silence it even less.)
I'd like to see the 280HP "Lycombing" - are you sure it's not a 180HP Lycoming?
Yeah, my spelling sucks (I ignore/. flames about it all the time).
I've got an Archer with a 180HP Lycoming, wanna race?:-)
Nah, you'd win.:-)
(I trained in Pipers and Cessna 172s)
Sundowners are wonderful aircraft to fly and very comfortable for long trips, but fast they aint. Mine is fairly clean, but it still trues out at around 110 kts, a far cry from the 120 kts the Piper's I used to rent would do (and they were fixed gear).
Very true, You're correct that I probably should have said "Linux has the potential to be much more secure than the average Windows system".
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Linux by default is vastly more secure than the average default windows system, and has the potential to be vastly more secure than any Windows machine connected to a network ever can be.
Merely saying "linux has the potential" is misleading, it implies that, by default, it isn't as secure as Windows, while the very opposite is true.
f there is ANY issue to discuss here, it should be that many communities "public spaces" (i.e. shopping malls, business centers,/.,etc.) are in fact privately owned, and what the ramifications are for free speech and expression in light of that.
Interesting point.
Very interesting, when one considers the efforts being made to privatize much of what is public (some have even suggested making streets and highways private tollways, and others have argued that public sidewalks are in fact private property).
Legislation strengthening the bill of rights is in order - extending them to any place which is made explicitly accessible to the public, such as shopping malls.
But then, I don't think private business should be excluded from abiding by the constitution either -- it dominates between 1/3 and 1/2 of our lives, yet our freedoms and privacy are nonexistent in the business sector. With current political trends toward replacing big government with big business, I see this only getting worse.
We may not be talking about Nazi Germany, but the future is looking more and more like a corporate faschist's wet dream: fat, apathetic and apolitical worker/consumer populace included.
Small aircraft engines still use leaded gasoline because it is VERY expensive to certify a new engine, and the market has not yet been able to justify it.
This was made worse by the litigation of the seventies and eighties, which nearly killed the General Aviation industry (production of nearly all small aircraft ground to a halt for over 10 years). The industry only came back after congress passed a law limiting aircraft manufacturer's liability to nineteen years. Almost immediately, the small aircraft industry turned around.
In addition, a number of patents have expired, freeing up previously locked down technologies.
Composites are helping to bring down fuselage weight (and thereby improve performance), so some additional weight in a liquid cooling system is more viable with modern materials than it was even ten years ago.
All of these are factors -- the final hurdle being, as noted in the previous post, an expensive and arduous certification process.
Not only must the engine be certified, but to retrofit into existing aircraft, it must be certified with that aircraft.
I doubt I'll be swapping out the 280 hp 100 LL burning lycombing engine in my Beech Sundowner anytime soon...
And yes, the FBI also has the right to be able to intercept both your phone calls and your emails if you are under suspicion.
I get so tired of people using the word "right" when they mean privelege.
The FBI doesn't have any "rights" whatsoever, constitutional or otherwise. They have priveleges, vast priveleges extended to them by congress and upheld by courts who are more concerned with expediency than they are the constitution, much less individual civil liberties.
These priveleges include wiretapping. However, if the various government agencies continue to abuse these priveleges, congress or the courts could pass a law, or make a ruling, to place additional limits on that privelege, or revoke it entirely.
Not that either institution is likely to display such courage, but they could if they so chose.
and while they have the right to look, users also have the right to encrypt their email to prevent this.
Again, we have the privelege of being able to use encryption to prevent snooping.
We desperately need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing us a right to privacy, including encryption and control of our data.
Our forfathers took the right to privacy to be a given, and only really anticipated one possible abuse of it, which they explicitly disallowed in the constitution. Had they taken the subject up more generally this wouldn't be a problem, but alas, they considered privacy in large part to be a given and didn't explicitly write it into the constitution as a right. While they could extrapolate many threats to our democracy, they never dreamed of the kinds of intrusions into our private lives we now take for granted, and are no doubt spinning in their graves as I type this. As a result, a right we all perceive ourselves is woefully missing from our most fundamental law, with the kind of auful results we read about here on slashdot nearly every week.
Alas, I am about as optomistic about congress and the states enacting a constitutional amendment to protect our privacy as I am about NASA getting a reasonable level of funding. The chances in both cases are unfortunately nil.
So, what legal position does this put KDE in, with their addition of the exception clause to the GPL explicitly allowing linkage to qt?
That, after all, is a change to the GPL.
Have folks, in an effort to fix one copyright/licensing problem, stumbled over another. It certainly appears so to me.
As an aside, I should note that I have made fair use of some portions of the GPL, GNU FDL, Open Content License, and others in putting together my Free Media License. I have the same clause, designed (as with the GPL) to prevent non-free licenses from masquerading as free licenses, but if one were to call the modified license by another name that shouldn't be an issue.
Perhaps I, and in the case of the GPL the FSF, should add a clause explicitly allowing modificatins so long as it is made clear that the modified license is not the Free Media License/GNU GPL... after all, the creator of a Work has the privelege of licensing their work under any license they desire, which should logically include a modified GPL...
On the other hand, this could become a terrible can of worms for free software/media efforts, with ten million slightly different, slightly incompatible licenses floating around.
There are a number of Open and Free Media efforts underway.
I am putting the finishing touches on a GPL-like Free Media License and will be licensing an ongoing Novel and Movie Script (entitled Autonomy) under it shortly. (Just my luck! Now I really wish I hadn't been so lazy about uploading later drafts - I'll try to get the later drafts and additional chapters uploaded tonight - what I've uploaded of my story is weeks old at this point).
(If anyone has more, please respond here and I'll add them to my website as well!)
The goals of these efforts are similar, to promote the free exchange and collaboration of media and entertainment and counter the trends toward draconian copyright restrictions on popular culture.
My own effort takes a GNU GPL approach, others take different approaches (including a BSD-style approach in at least one case).
Katz rhetoric aside, I encourage everyone to check out these sites and consider releasing some of their own work under whatever license/philosophy most comfortably matches their own.
I apologise, in future any lighthearted comments I make will be appended with a smiley face for those with opinions.
As every person on the planet capable of sentient thought has opinions, that might be a good idea.:-)
If you were joking I apologize for not picking up on it. (In this case the smiley would have been helpful). To be honest, I found the initial post you replied to a little arrogant, and his choice of terminology (homo superior) left something to be desired perhaps, but...
There are so many knee-jerk reactions of the kind your post (imitated?) that seek to silence discussions of controversial topics (and there is little that is more controversial, or stirrs up emotions more, than eugenics). I dislike it when subjects are made taboo for discussion, and invoking Adolf Hitler is a very common means of doing just that.
As in this case, when that happens I often find myself arguing a point of view I may not agree with, simply to counter the tendency in our society to not discuss or argue the point at all.
(here I go, defending someone I don't really agree with)
Invoking Adolf Hitler anytime someone mentions the possibility of the species improving itself is intellectually bankrupt and foolish.
Evolution is about changing the species, adapting it to be better suited for survival under particular conditions and, contrary to popular myth (insert Kansas State High School curriculum here), evolution does occur over time, even to homo sapiens. Assuming we don't go extinct, someday the dreaded (and tabu to mention) homo superior will emerge. What would you rather have, complete stagnation of the species until the sun bloats red and consumes the earth?
Intelligence is one of the defining survival traits of humanity -- it is the one thing that allows an otherwise weak, poorly adapted tree-hanger ascendency over the rest of the animal kingdom and the planet (at least until the very ecosystem that sustains us collapses, taking us with it). It is arguably our most critical survival trait as a species.
Are we wise enough to direct our own evolution? The verdict is in and the jury has rendered its emotional, intellectually void decision in a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of world war II and genocidal maniacs like Hitler. As with most irrational and emotional verdicts, the answer arrived at has no greater likelihood of being correct than if one were to simply flip a coin for the answer.
The truth is we are already directing our evolution, and will do so even more so in the future. Those with characteristics that give them decisive advantages over others could be termed "homo superior." Not the most politically correct terminology, perhaps, but certainly not a call to genocide as your snippity reply implies.
Human eugenics is a tabu subject because of perceived historical abuses (which actually had nothing to do with eugenics, other than using the concept as a propoganda point to promote very non-eugenic actions, eg crimes against humanity and genocide). What we forget is, making something tabu to discuss doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it simply means we have our head in the sand while other societal and natural forces replace conscious human direction.
Is this preferable? Perhaps. Certainly natural forces should be tampered with only with a great deal of caution (if at all). But what about societal forces, which are defined by our culture and economic system, and are therefor inherently artificial to begin with? As an example, economic disincentives in the United States lead many of the most intelligent and most prosperous people to have the fewest children (many having none at all), while at the same time our welfare programs provide monetary incentives for those unable to support their own children to have even more.
Whether or not you personally agree with the outcome, there is clearly an artificial form of eugenic breeding taken place, as undirected and unplanned as it may be.
Perhaps our inability to even ponder these notions has resulted in the opposite: our actively breeding "homo idiotus." The self-acclaimed geek you responded to may achieve the advantages s/he would have had had s/he become "homo superior," simply by remaining "homo sapiens" in a world populated by humans of ever decreasing intelligence.
The conspiracy theorists might go so far as to argue that some dark, evil government/business powerbase is deliberately breeding a slow, dimwitted, slave consumer class. I suspect, however, we are achieving that result more by accident, as a direct result of our unwillingness to discuss and cope with fundamental issues of human biology, breeding, and the social, political, and economic incentives we have built (consciously or otherwise) to encourage particular traits.
Of course, assorted evil companies are trying to control these games and it is their right to do so.
It disburbs me to see how effective pro-intellectual property propoganda has been -- they have convinced most of us to think in their terms, without our even realizing it.
Copyright is a misnomer. It isn't a right, it is a privelege which our government has granted various authors, publishing houses, software enterprises, etc. A privelege which they look upon as a right, and have convinced most of the rest of us is their "right." It is a privelege which has been sorely abused in the last century and will be abused even more in the years to come.
Losing our digital heritage is just one cost this privelege is exacting from our society.
Movies are decaying, by the time they enter the public domain many of them are unrecoverable, lost forever.
The same is often true of other media as well -- recordings which go out of print and are never released (or recordings which were never made, of concerts for example, except by fans doing so illegally).
Restricted copy priveleges are costing our culture our digital, cinematic, and musical heritage, all to protect the revinue streams of Disney, Time-Warner, and their ilk.
Still think we have a government "by the people, for the people?"
One of the funnest games I ever played was Star Fleet II.
It was mostly text, with rudimentary CGI graphics for the planetary bombardment screen. It was buggy as hell, would often crash, etc.
But it had to be one of the funnest space conquest games ever. You attack starships (represented as little greek symbols on a text starscape), board and take prisoners, torture them for information ("The Prisoners will be tortured your Excellency, Hail Zagar!"). Upon successfully bombarding a planet into submission one would typically be given 50 slaves for the conquest. Particularly wanton acts of cruelty (slaying all of the prisoners after they surrendered for example) would be awarded with a medal for "wonton cruelty to the enemy" or some such.)
Sometimes it is just plain fun to be the bad guy *grin*. The game had:
Zero Artistic Merit. Zero Social Merit. A Minimal Storyline. Mediocre Programming Quality (buggy as hell).
Despite this it wsa very playable, very addictive, unbelievably fun!
No sane MIS toadie is going to risk his neck on Linux. It's like one of those "problem-solving flowcharts" that every self-respecting geek owns. If something breaks, always have someone to point the finger at. If you're the guy who brought in Linux to the company, suddenly you're at the bottom of the blame chain. Bad place to be.
This lack of willingness to take responsibility for one's work often severely hampers a company's compatability, and is probably one of the biggest factors in allowing small startups to so often challenge and occasionally even topple the entrenched giants.
As a counter example, it is really nice to be the guy who grought Linux into the company, helped make the company millions in the process, and get sufficient consideration to be able to afford really fun toys (like fast computers and even faster airplanes).
Of course, I work for a small enough company that CYA is a very minor concern -- getting the job done in an economical and reliable fashion is much more important, and for what we do (options and futures trading at the exchanges) Linux truly excells over the alternatives (Windows/NT - which has taken a couple of our competitors down for days and thereby helped to make us millions -- thanks Microsoft! -- and Solaris: reliable, but expensive, cumbersome, and slow, unless running on really high end, even more expensive, equipment).
Folks like you and I are in a great position to take advantage of the entrenched and relatively clueless MIS toadies' fears - we can take the risks (minor) they are unwilling to and reap the rewards (tremendous) they were blind to. Not a bad place to be at all.
Millions of fans hold their breath and hope this one is good (it'd be tough to go downhill, that's for sure).
It is probably being shot in digital both to facilitate some Dramatic Digital Special Effects and its release into HDTV/DVD format at some future date.
However, Jar Jar is back.
Need one say any more. It can't be much better, with Jar Jar it will probably be at least as difficult to sit through as the Episode I if not worse, and unless we see mitochondria being written out of the script, I suspect we can write the entire mythos off.
My suggestion: stick to the first two movies (Episodes IV and V) and pretend the others were never made. You'll enjoy it a whole lot more that way... and frankly, George Lucas doesn't deserve any more of your money at this point.
On the other hand , the changes you are advocating are very fundamental and basically do away with the way that American business community managed itself for over 100 years.
Yes, American business would have to adjust. Much the same way it had to adjust when 350 years of slavery were ended, when countless centuries of child labor practices were outlawed, when a century of trusts and monopolies were outlawed, and so forth.
If anything, the fact that this absurdity has persisted for so long should be reason for our working harder for change, not shying away from it.
given to the root of the problem -> is it IP law or the way it is executed. ( after all IP was desigend to _protect_ inventors with limited means )
You're right, such dramatic change does require some thought and IMHO a lively debate -- not the rubber stamping most Copyright and Patent Cartel written laws get from congress these days.
I have given it some thought and have reached what I consider to be a well reasoned conclusion, although it certainly sounds dramatic to some, especially those who in the past have never questioned IP law (and I only started seriously questioning it a few years ago).
Patents are basically a government mandated monopoly, with numerous ill-effects that far outweigh whatever advantages the system may offer.
Copyright law is far too draconian and far reaching, and needs to be rolled back to the status it had in the first century of this country (the sharp limits of copyright played no small part in the United States becoming one of the first nations with widespread literacy, it certainly hasn't helped any).
Life + 90 years is, for beings with a limited life span, a "limited" time only in the theoretical sense. For all intensts and purposes to those alive at the time, it is "forever", as everyone will be long dead before the material even has a chance of entering the public domain, assuming Disney et. al. don't purchase another Sony Bono Act in 20 years to extend it again (and they probably will).
Similarly, 20 years from the date of filing for patents is, for nearly every technology in this day and age, an effective eternity, again only a "limited" time in the legally technical, not practical, sense.
Given a choice between our current IP Law and no IP whatsoever, no IP would be highly preferable. I think no patents whatsoever would be highly preferable regardless, while copyright needs to be seriously reworked, with times limited to 15 or 20 years, not life + 90, and with most of the draconian provisions of the DMCA overturned.
At any rate, you *can* buy Windows, Office, etc. off the shelf, so getting a retail price for the purposes of such a plan is hardly impossible.
True. My point wasn't that it would be impossible, but rather that for the vast majority of consumers nothing substantial would have changed.
Furthermore, as others have noted, there is a gaping loophole in the warranty provision that would allow Microsoft (and, to be fair, the Free Software Foundation) to disclaim all warranties, which is precisely what they would do.
The result? Another law on the books, another potential legal landmine for the unwary and niave, and absolutely no change in the status quo.
As I said, such laws offer nothing, yet prey upon the unwary. In this case, both the unwary consumer who thinks they have a warranty, but more to the point, the unwary, generous soul who gives away a piece of software (perhaps into the public domain with no license and no warranty disclaimer) and suddenly finds themself up to their neck in liability.
In short, given that everyone from Microsoft down to Joe Schmoe has the option to disclaim all warranty under the proposed legislation (and I don't think this is necessarilly a bad thing), what is the point of passing the provision at all?
Sure. Require a warranty. But limit liability to some function of the price paid for the software/license.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately most copies of Windows (and many of Office, etc.) come bundled with computers at no additional cost to the purchaser. Microsoft could (and probably would) argue that the consumer had paid $0 for the product and hence had no warranty. The PC manufacturer might be entitiled to $30 worth of warrenty (1 support call?), but the actualy buyer might be entitled to nothing.
Suppose that UCITA required that software writers be on the hook for up to three times the cost of their program.
There are enough other things wrong with UCITA to disqualify it from being a good idea, even if a reasonable compromise on warranties could be reached, and IMHO it is impossible to do so, as any disclaimer negates it anyway. Such a law is designed to prey upon the unwary: it adds no requirement to corporations with savvy legal departments, but victimizes joe schmoe who gives something away for free without knowing the law, and hence without properly disclaiming a warranty.
Slashdot Mirror
This is incorrect. DeCSS is a WINDOWS PROGRAM to descramble and copy the files from a DVD to the hard drive. Once it's on the drive then it can be played back by just about anything (including linux, SCO, Solaris, etc.)
...
This is correct. DeCSS was written before the UDF filesystem existed for Linux. It was used in conjunction with WINE/Windows, to get access to a decrypted VOB file so that work on the Linux DVD player software could continue, and not be held up by the lack of native UDF support.
DeCSS was never intended, nor ever used, to pirate DVDs. The MPAA has even admitted as much - their argument is that it violates the DMCA because it gets around their encryption, and the innocence of the software's purpose and use is irrelevant. The MPAA will certainly win this round, with a corrupt judge presiding over the case despite numerous conflicts of interest, and they might possibly win the appeal as well (based on how the law is written). Of course, we're all hoping the appeals process overturns that portion of the law, but who can tell? The only forgone conclusion is that they will lose the current trial, primarilly because of a corrupt and ethically bankrupt judge.
Now Linux supports UDF just fine, and the linux version of DeCSS, css-auth, allows Linux users to decrypt and watch their DVDs. The players are maturing rapidly as well (if you've got a dual P3/600 they are arguably already there).
See the LiViD mailing list for more info
Amusing thought: imagine a feature for Gnutilla that found the cheapest price on any music product, using a search job efficiently distributed across all users. (It might also watch for price-fixing patterns on CD prices and report them to the FTC, just to annoy the RIAA).
I would willingly donate cpu cycles and hard drive space in support of an effort of this kind.
Much of the work the FBI does is simple data collection/correlation/analysis. Creating an open, public watchdog project to monitor the behavior of corporations, esp. with respect to price fixing, and put behind it the computational power of the internet, would be an exciting project.
The only downside is see: what happens if someone adopts said software to watch an individual. How does one insure their spare cpu cycles are used ethically?
Freedom is a precious thing, and has nothing to do with peculiar software licences dreamt up by barmy hippies.
Freedom is a precious thing, and it has everything to do with a peculiar software license.
Your inability to understand this may stem from a biweekly Microsoft check, an inflexible mindset, or outright stupidity, however, your inability to understand this makes it no less true.
Last I checked, you don't have to pull carrier pigeons or buffalo out of the ground.
To the previous poster: Give up.
This guy will never get it, and he'd rather have his teeth pulled out one by one than ever admit he's wrong.
When we do run out of oil in 20-40 years (the numbers I saw were 10-20, but that may have assumed SUV-quality gas milage, which most cars fortunately can better), he'll no doubt be saying "we could have had an infinite supply, if they'd just taken my advice and left some in the ground!"
He doesn't understand the extremes of supply and demand, where the incentives to deplete the last of the supply are tremendously high because of its scarcity and very high demand -- the financial incentives and profit margin are much, much higher, far outstripping any disincentives the additional cost to get the last of the resource might imply. This translates to everything from Art, to the Ivory trade, to minerals in mines, to oil. It is likely that the last of the oil will actually disappear faster, because the financial incentives to get it and cash in on it will be much, much greater than the high cost to extract it will be, and certainly much greater than incentives today.
I'm not a lawyer, but aren't judges prohibited from presiding in cases that they are not impartial on?
IANALE (IANAL either), however, since the only real check and balance in this situation is the judge's own personal honor, to voluntarily step back and let someone else preside over the case, the effective answer to your question is "No." In Kaplan's case, he has demonstraded quite clearly that he has no honor or integrity whatsoever.
As another noted, this will be decided on appeal. The results of this trial are a forgone conclusion, and quite probably already paid for in advance.
Perhaps Kaplan could be impeached for knowingly presiding over this case with such a flagrant conflict of interest, but judges almost never get impeached. Even judges who commit heinous acts, such as raping a woman in their courtroom (it has happened) are difficult to dislodge. Something as innocuous as denying the little guy justice in favor of a large corporate cartel doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting any public attention - a prerequisite to any kind of reparation or justice.
Less facetiously, I am wondering what Napster gets out of this.
One thing they get out of this is some serious ammunition in their ongoing court case against the RIAA Cartel.
The courts might be persuaded to ignore the rights of a legitimate company, if it is percieved to have a product which is primarily used for "illigetimate" purposes (this has happened before - Bong makers in some states, whos tobacco product is banned because most users use it for marijuana instead). However, if the company has a product with a clearly legitimate use, and an alliance with Hollywood is a pretty high profile "legitimate" use, the RIAA will likely be slam dunked for trying to strong arm them out of existence.
And if the deals with Hollywood prove to onerous, napster can withdraw after the trial is over.
It's not like they are accused of murder or spying or something.
No, they are accused of something far worse: being smarter than corporate AmeriCa and the government, and rubbing their collective nose in it.
Remember meatnik? He did more time than many rapists and murderers, and while he cracked a lot of systems and was privy to a lot of confidential information, he never actually stole a single penny. In addition, contrary to official Corporate Myth,[1] he never even caused any damage -- he simply revealed security flaws (which needed to be fixed regardless) in an inappropriate manner in order to feed his own information fetish.
I suspect that these crackers could expect the same level of justice, i.e. none to speak of.
[1]In the typical fashion of our times, lawyers and accountants are cooking up numbers claiming absurd damages because now they have to fix their broken security, as if leaving a safe unlocked and open, on a busy public street (or even an open private driveway) would be acceptable practice under any circumstance. "If the messanger is an annoying punk, shoot him" seems to be our credo these days.
(As an aside, I am aware of no cases applying the protections of a shield law to an Internet reporter, but none denying it either, the issue has not yet arisen in the courts.)
What is with the notion that an "internet reporter" is any different than a meatspace reporter?
The so-called "internet reporters" are physical people, not some sentient piece of software. As physical poeple, this makes them physical reporters, therefor the law should apply equally, qed. Or are we now assigning different laws to people of different professions, or who use different tools for the same profession?
Must we subscribe to the same flawed logic that allows a company (whome we won't mention *cough* Amazaon *cough*) to patent obvious activities, simply because they are being conducted on the net instead of in meatspace?
We do not need special laws for the internet, nor do we need special court cases and trials. Existing law is more than sufficient, perhaps even too much. We certainly do not need to keep adding feces to the pile.
And today, the same arguments are being made, about the same kind of people. "out of work, will take any job". And the previous poster, about people on welfare having more children. You people seriously need a better education.
I am extremely well educated, thank you.
Perhaps you should polish your reading skills. I said that there were economic incentives built into the welfare system that encourage those unable to provide for themselves to have more children, I did not anywhere in my post say that people on welfare were the only ones having more children. Taking various demographic groups, Mormons and Catholics are two other groups with prolific breeding habits which come to mind. Welfare recipients are a third group which does, on average, have more than the national average of 2.x children. AFAIK they are the only group receiving active, finanical incentives to do so.
This is exactly the kind of stuff that resulted in millions of cripples/gays/gypsies/jews being killed because they were considered to be weakening the gene pool by breeding faster and being a burden on society.
No, it isn't. Racial, ethnic, and social hatreds and prejudices led to the barbarism and genocide of world war II. Eugenics were merely a rhetorical point used in propoganda to promote the notion that such abominations were OK.
I'll say it again.
Breeding != Killing.
Eugenics != Genocide.
Thank you though, for illustrating my point about "taboo subjects for discussion" so brilliantly. Your use of ad hominim attacks and comparisons to Nazis, as well as your predictable invocation of the holocaust, in an effort to silence even the discussion of Eugenics and human breeding patterns, implying that the very concepts and discussions themselves led directly to such an atrocity (which coudn't be further from the truth) couldn't have made a better example if I'd written it myself.
(And yes, once again I'm arguing a stance I don't really agree with, because I agree with your effort to silence it even less.)
I'd like to see the 280HP "Lycombing" - are you sure it's not a 180HP Lycoming?
/. flames about it all the time).
:-)
:-)
Yeah, my spelling sucks (I ignore
I've got an Archer with a 180HP Lycoming, wanna race?
Nah, you'd win.
(I trained in Pipers and Cessna 172s)
Sundowners are wonderful aircraft to fly and very comfortable for long trips, but fast they aint. Mine is fairly clean, but it still trues out at around 110 kts, a far cry from the 120 kts the Piper's I used to rent would do (and they were fixed gear).
Very true, You're correct that I probably should have said "Linux has the potential to be much more secure than the average Windows system".
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Linux by default is vastly more secure than the average default windows system, and has the potential to be vastly more secure than any Windows machine connected to a network ever can be.
Merely saying "linux has the potential" is misleading, it implies that, by default, it isn't as secure as Windows, while the very opposite is true.
f there is ANY issue to discuss here, it should be that many communities "public spaces" (i.e. shopping malls, business centers, /. ,etc.) are in fact privately owned, and what the ramifications are for free speech and expression in light of that.
Interesting point.
Very interesting, when one considers the efforts being made to privatize much of what is public (some have even suggested making streets and highways private tollways, and others have argued that public sidewalks are in fact private property).
Legislation strengthening the bill of rights is in order - extending them to any place which is made explicitly accessible to the public, such as shopping malls.
But then, I don't think private business should be excluded from abiding by the constitution either -- it dominates between 1/3 and 1/2 of our lives, yet our freedoms and privacy are nonexistent in the business sector. With current political trends toward replacing big government with big business, I see this only getting worse.
We may not be talking about Nazi Germany, but the future is looking more and more like a corporate faschist's wet dream: fat, apathetic and apolitical worker/consumer populace included.
Small aircraft engines still use leaded gasoline because it is VERY expensive to certify a new engine, and the market has not yet been able to justify it.
...
This was made worse by the litigation of the seventies and eighties, which nearly killed the General Aviation industry (production of nearly all small aircraft ground to a halt for over 10 years). The industry only came back after congress passed a law limiting aircraft manufacturer's liability to nineteen years. Almost immediately, the small aircraft industry turned around.
In addition, a number of patents have expired, freeing up previously locked down technologies.
Composites are helping to bring down fuselage weight (and thereby improve performance), so some additional weight in a liquid cooling system is more viable with modern materials than it was even ten years ago.
All of these are factors -- the final hurdle being, as noted in the previous post, an expensive and arduous certification process.
Not only must the engine be certified, but to retrofit into existing aircraft, it must be certified with that aircraft.
I doubt I'll be swapping out the 280 hp 100 LL burning lycombing engine in my Beech Sundowner anytime soon
And yes, the FBI also has the right to be able to intercept both your phone calls and your emails if you are under suspicion.
I get so tired of people using the word "right" when they mean privelege.
The FBI doesn't have any "rights" whatsoever, constitutional or otherwise. They have priveleges, vast priveleges extended to them by congress and upheld by courts who are more concerned with expediency than they are the constitution, much less individual civil liberties.
These priveleges include wiretapping. However, if the various government agencies continue to abuse these priveleges, congress or the courts could pass a law, or make a ruling, to place additional limits on that privelege, or revoke it entirely.
Not that either institution is likely to display such courage, but they could if they so chose.
and while they have the right to look, users also have the right to encrypt their email to prevent this.
Again, we have the privelege of being able to use encryption to prevent snooping.
We desperately need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing us a right to privacy, including encryption and control of our data.
Our forfathers took the right to privacy to be a given, and only really anticipated one possible abuse of it, which they explicitly disallowed in the constitution. Had they taken the subject up more generally this wouldn't be a problem, but alas, they considered privacy in large part to be a given and didn't explicitly write it into the constitution as a right. While they could extrapolate many threats to our democracy, they never dreamed of the kinds of intrusions into our private lives we now take for granted, and are no doubt spinning in their graves as I type this. As a result, a right we all perceive ourselves is woefully missing from our most fundamental law, with the kind of auful results we read about here on slashdot nearly every week.
Alas, I am about as optomistic about congress and the states enacting a constitutional amendment to protect our privacy as I am about NASA getting a reasonable level of funding. The chances in both cases are unfortunately nil.
I quote the GPL:
... after all, the creator of a Work has the privelege of licensing their work under any license they desire, which should logically include a modified GPL...
"...but changing it is not allowed."
So, what legal position does this put KDE in, with their addition of the exception clause to the GPL explicitly allowing linkage to qt?
That, after all, is a change to the GPL.
Have folks, in an effort to fix one copyright/licensing problem, stumbled over another. It certainly appears so to me.
As an aside, I should note that I have made fair use of some portions of the GPL, GNU FDL, Open Content License, and others in putting together my Free Media License. I have the same clause, designed (as with the GPL) to prevent non-free licenses from masquerading as free licenses, but if one were to call the modified license by another name that shouldn't be an issue.
Perhaps I, and in the case of the GPL the FSF, should add a clause explicitly allowing modificatins so long as it is made clear that the modified license is not the Free Media License/GNU GPL
On the other hand, this could become a terrible can of worms for free software/media efforts, with ten million slightly different, slightly incompatible licenses floating around.
I am putting the finishing touches on a GPL-like Free Media License and will be licensing an ongoing Novel and Movie Script (entitled Autonomy) under it shortly. (Just my luck! Now I really wish I hadn't been so lazy about uploading later drafts - I'll try to get the later drafts and additional chapters uploaded tonight - what I've uploaded of my story is weeks old at this point).
Open and Free Media Sites include
(If anyone has more, please respond here and I'll add them to my website as well!)
The goals of these efforts are similar, to promote the free exchange and collaboration of media and entertainment and counter the trends toward draconian copyright restrictions on popular culture.
My own effort takes a GNU GPL approach, others take different approaches (including a BSD-style approach in at least one case).
Katz rhetoric aside, I encourage everyone to check out these sites and consider releasing some of their own work under whatever license/philosophy most comfortably matches their own.
I apologise, in future any lighthearted comments I make will be appended with a smiley face for those with opinions.
:-)
...
As every person on the planet capable of sentient thought has opinions, that might be a good idea.
If you were joking I apologize for not picking up on it. (In this case the smiley would have been helpful). To be honest, I found the initial post you replied to a little arrogant, and his choice of terminology (homo superior) left something to be desired perhaps, but
There are so many knee-jerk reactions of the kind your post (imitated?) that seek to silence discussions of controversial topics (and there is little that is more controversial, or stirrs up emotions more, than eugenics). I dislike it when subjects are made taboo for discussion, and invoking Adolf Hitler is a very common means of doing just that.
As in this case, when that happens I often find myself arguing a point of view I may not agree with, simply to counter the tendency in our society to not discuss or argue the point at all.
*sigh*
(here I go, defending someone I don't really agree with)
Invoking Adolf Hitler anytime someone mentions the possibility of the species improving itself is intellectually bankrupt and foolish.
Evolution is about changing the species, adapting it to be better suited for survival under particular conditions and, contrary to popular myth (insert Kansas State High School curriculum here), evolution does occur over time, even to homo sapiens. Assuming we don't go extinct, someday the dreaded (and tabu to mention) homo superior will emerge. What would you rather have, complete stagnation of the species until the sun bloats red and consumes the earth?
Intelligence is one of the defining survival traits of humanity -- it is the one thing that allows an otherwise weak, poorly adapted tree-hanger ascendency over the rest of the animal kingdom and the planet (at least until the very ecosystem that sustains us collapses, taking us with it). It is arguably our most critical survival trait as a species.
Are we wise enough to direct our own evolution? The verdict is in and the jury has rendered its emotional, intellectually void decision in a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of world war II and genocidal maniacs like Hitler. As with most irrational and emotional verdicts, the answer arrived at has no greater likelihood of being correct than if one were to simply flip a coin for the answer.
The truth is we are already directing our evolution, and will do so even more so in the future. Those with characteristics that give them decisive advantages over others could be termed "homo superior." Not the most politically correct terminology, perhaps, but certainly not a call to genocide as your snippity reply implies.
Human eugenics is a tabu subject because of perceived historical abuses (which actually had nothing to do with eugenics, other than using the concept as a propoganda point to promote very non-eugenic actions, eg crimes against humanity and genocide). What we forget is, making something tabu to discuss doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it simply means we have our head in the sand while other societal and natural forces replace conscious human direction.
Is this preferable? Perhaps. Certainly natural forces should be tampered with only with a great deal of caution (if at all). But what about societal forces, which are defined by our culture and economic system, and are therefor inherently artificial to begin with? As an example, economic disincentives in the United States lead many of the most intelligent and most prosperous people to have the fewest children (many having none at all), while at the same time our welfare programs provide monetary incentives for those unable to support their own children to have even more.
Whether or not you personally agree with the outcome, there is clearly an artificial form of eugenic breeding taken place, as undirected and unplanned as it may be.
Perhaps our inability to even ponder these notions has resulted in the opposite: our actively breeding "homo idiotus." The self-acclaimed geek you responded to may achieve the advantages s/he would have had had s/he become "homo superior," simply by remaining "homo sapiens" in a world populated by humans of ever decreasing intelligence.
The conspiracy theorists might go so far as to argue that some dark, evil government/business powerbase is deliberately breeding a slow, dimwitted, slave consumer class. I suspect, however, we are achieving that result more by accident, as a direct result of our unwillingness to discuss and cope with fundamental issues of human biology, breeding, and the social, political, and economic incentives we have built (consciously or otherwise) to encourage particular traits.
Of course, assorted evil companies are trying to control these games and it is their right to do so.
It disburbs me to see how effective pro-intellectual property propoganda has been -- they have convinced most of us to think in their terms, without our even realizing it.
Copyright is a misnomer. It isn't a right, it is a privelege which our government has granted various authors, publishing houses, software enterprises, etc. A privelege which they look upon as a right, and have convinced most of the rest of us is their "right." It is a privelege which has been sorely abused in the last century and will be abused even more in the years to come.
Losing our digital heritage is just one cost this privelege is exacting from our society.
Movies are decaying, by the time they enter the public domain many of them are unrecoverable, lost forever.
The same is often true of other media as well -- recordings which go out of print and are never released (or recordings which were never made, of concerts for example, except by fans doing so illegally).
Restricted copy priveleges are costing our culture our digital, cinematic, and musical heritage, all to protect the revinue streams of Disney, Time-Warner, and their ilk.
Still think we have a government "by the people, for the people?"
One of the funnest games I ever played was Star Fleet II.
It was mostly text, with rudimentary CGI graphics for the planetary bombardment screen. It was buggy as hell, would often crash, etc.
But it had to be one of the funnest space conquest games ever. You attack starships (represented as little greek symbols on a text starscape), board and take prisoners, torture them for information ("The Prisoners will be tortured your Excellency, Hail Zagar!"). Upon successfully bombarding a planet into submission one would typically be given 50 slaves for the conquest. Particularly wanton acts of cruelty (slaying all of the prisoners after they surrendered for example) would be awarded with a medal for "wonton cruelty to the enemy" or some such.)
Sometimes it is just plain fun to be the bad guy *grin*. The game had:
Zero Artistic Merit.
Zero Social Merit.
A Minimal Storyline.
Mediocre Programming Quality (buggy as hell).
Despite this it wsa very playable, very addictive, unbelievably fun!
No sane MIS toadie is going to risk his neck on Linux. It's like one of those "problem-solving flowcharts" that every self-respecting geek owns. If something breaks, always have someone to point the finger at. If you're the guy who brought in Linux to the company, suddenly you're at the bottom of the blame chain. Bad place to be.
This lack of willingness to take responsibility for one's work often severely hampers a company's compatability, and is probably one of the biggest factors in allowing small startups to so often challenge and occasionally even topple the entrenched giants.
As a counter example, it is really nice to be the guy who grought Linux into the company, helped make the company millions in the process, and get sufficient consideration to be able to afford really fun toys (like fast computers and even faster airplanes).
Of course, I work for a small enough company that CYA is a very minor concern -- getting the job done in an economical and reliable fashion is much more important, and for what we do (options and futures trading at the exchanges) Linux truly excells over the alternatives (Windows/NT - which has taken a couple of our competitors down for days and thereby helped to make us millions -- thanks Microsoft! -- and Solaris: reliable, but expensive, cumbersome, and slow, unless running on really high end, even more expensive, equipment).
Folks like you and I are in a great position to take advantage of the entrenched and relatively clueless MIS toadies' fears - we can take the risks (minor) they are unwilling to and reap the rewards (tremendous) they were blind to. Not a bad place to be at all.
Millions of fans hold their breath and hope this one is good (it'd be tough to go downhill, that's for sure).
... and frankly, George Lucas doesn't deserve any more of your money at this point.
It is probably being shot in digital both to facilitate some Dramatic Digital Special Effects and its release into HDTV/DVD format at some future date.
However, Jar Jar is back.
Need one say any more. It can't be much better, with Jar Jar it will probably be at least as difficult to sit through as the Episode I if not worse, and unless we see mitochondria being written out of the script, I suspect we can write the entire mythos off.
My suggestion: stick to the first two movies (Episodes IV and V) and pretend the others were never made. You'll enjoy it a whole lot more that way
On the other hand , the changes you are advocating are very fundamental and basically do away with the way that American business community managed itself for over 100 years.
Yes, American business would have to adjust. Much the same way it had to adjust when 350 years of slavery were ended, when countless centuries of child labor practices were outlawed, when a century of trusts and monopolies were outlawed, and so forth.
If anything, the fact that this absurdity has persisted for so long should be reason for our working harder for change, not shying away from it.
given to the root of the problem -> is it IP law or the way it is executed.
( after all IP was desigend to _protect_ inventors with limited means )
You're right, such dramatic change does require some thought and IMHO a lively debate -- not the rubber stamping most Copyright and Patent Cartel written laws get from congress these days.
I have given it some thought and have reached what I consider to be a well reasoned conclusion, although it certainly sounds dramatic to some, especially those who in the past have never questioned IP law (and I only started seriously questioning it a few years ago).
Patents are basically a government mandated monopoly, with numerous ill-effects that far outweigh whatever advantages the system may offer.
Copyright law is far too draconian and far reaching, and needs to be rolled back to the status it had in the first century of this country (the sharp limits of copyright played no small part in the United States becoming one of the first nations with widespread literacy, it certainly hasn't helped any).
Life + 90 years is, for beings with a limited life span, a "limited" time only in the theoretical sense. For all intensts and purposes to those alive at the time, it is "forever", as everyone will be long dead before the material even has a chance of entering the public domain, assuming Disney et. al. don't purchase another Sony Bono Act in 20 years to extend it again (and they probably will).
Similarly, 20 years from the date of filing for patents is, for nearly every technology in this day and age, an effective eternity, again only a "limited" time in the legally technical, not practical, sense.
Given a choice between our current IP Law and no IP whatsoever, no IP would be highly preferable. I think no patents whatsoever would be highly preferable regardless, while copyright needs to be seriously reworked, with times limited to 15 or 20 years, not life + 90, and with most of the draconian provisions of the DMCA overturned.
At any rate, you *can* buy Windows, Office, etc. off the shelf, so getting a retail price for the purposes of such a plan is hardly impossible.
True. My point wasn't that it would be impossible, but rather that for the vast majority of consumers nothing substantial would have changed.
Furthermore, as others have noted, there is a gaping loophole in the warranty provision that would allow Microsoft (and, to be fair, the Free Software Foundation) to disclaim all warranties, which is precisely what they would do.
The result? Another law on the books, another potential legal landmine for the unwary and niave, and absolutely no change in the status quo.
As I said, such laws offer nothing, yet prey upon the unwary. In this case, both the unwary consumer who thinks they have a warranty, but more to the point, the unwary, generous soul who gives away a piece of software (perhaps into the public domain with no license and no warranty disclaimer) and suddenly finds themself up to their neck in liability.
In short, given that everyone from Microsoft down to Joe Schmoe has the option to disclaim all warranty under the proposed legislation (and I don't think this is necessarilly a bad thing), what is the point of passing the provision at all?
Sure. Require a warranty. But limit liability to some function of the price paid for the software/license.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately most copies of Windows (and many of Office, etc.) come bundled with computers at no additional cost to the purchaser. Microsoft could (and probably would) argue that the consumer had paid $0 for the product and hence had no warranty. The PC manufacturer might be entitiled to $30 worth of warrenty (1 support call?), but the actualy buyer might be entitled to nothing.
Suppose that UCITA required that software writers be on the hook for up to three times the cost of their program.
There are enough other things wrong with UCITA to disqualify it from being a good idea, even if a reasonable compromise on warranties could be reached, and IMHO it is impossible to do so, as any disclaimer negates it anyway. Such a law is designed to prey upon the unwary: it adds no requirement to corporations with savvy legal departments, but victimizes joe schmoe who gives something away for free without knowing the law, and hence without properly disclaiming a warranty.