This isn't a case of fighting an uber-huge corporation that has billions of dollars to spare. This guy is effectively cheating a good source of revenue out of a photographer who is trying to earn a living.
you seem to be argueing that he doesn't have a valid point because the photographer isn't rich. how wealthy the person is, is completely irrelevant to whether he is right or not.
you're implying that ownership of the media is the same as ownership of the IP on that media.
the content on the negatives was not created by the photographer, they may have used their skill to capture the right moments, but they did not create those moments, they merely framed them well, as they were hired to do. why should they own the copyright?
I'm not saying that photography is easy just that they are being hired to create something so the copyright should belong to the person who paid for the creation, thats how it works in other lines of content creation work.
paid coders don't own their work, paid musicians often don't own their work. I doubt that the ppl employed to write the manual for a cisco pix own the copyright on that, whats the difference?
in fact, lets look at that last example. the authors of the cisco pix manual didn't create the pix firmware, or even the pix itself. they merely created a work with pix firmware as a primary subject and used their own skills in writing to produce a manual. this is the same as a photographer. he does not create the subject matter, he merely captures parts of it and presents it nicely, doing precisely what he's paid to do, so why should he keep copyright and not the technical author(s)?
if the married couple to be signed a contract with the photographer explicitly giving away rights to the photo's then fair enough (although that still sucks, I do at least grant it's perfectly legal) but if it's an assumed thing then I think it's wrong.
well, while I don't know for a fact if US law matches UK law on this issue (I really, realy think it does), if you are contracted by person A do create something then the copyright belongs to person A by default. ie microsoft employer lots and lots of ppl to create things for them (ie software) but the copyright doesn't rest with the individual coders but with the company that employs them, ie m$.
now in uk law, if you create something in work hours that has nothing to do with you job whatsoever, then you have a case to keep your copyright, in fact if you create something that is to do with your job but it's so amazing that no-one would have expected such a miraculous thing to have come from the boring shit you were working on, then you also have a case to keep it (that one surprised me), however, in this situation it seems to me like you are hiring the photographer to create something (ie a nice photo) for you. you are paying them to do work therefore the copyright should belong to you (unless signed away by contract with the photographer beforehand).
well, there is no requirement for video to be analogue, I'm using a digital video output (dvi, another connector for you) to connect my gfx card to my tft screen.
well, for me it's because linux has little foibles that annoy me. I like the way freebsd works. the way of updating the base system, the cleanness of the/etc directory. it's a matter of personal preference really. I never really liked compiling kernels on linux and the spraying of user installed apps all over the filesystem. I find freebsd to be "neater" and I know it better than I know linux.
most of the things I use are available in source form and compile wonderfully on freebsd. other apps I run under linux emulation (including, I might add, unreal tournament with full 3d hardware acceleration, I'm hoping to get simcity 3ku linux working this week (after it arrives that is).
only good if you're running linux. I play ut under freebsd using the linux client and an nvidia card is damn all good to me there. I use an ati radeon instead because I can get HW accelerated 3d in that. besides, we want competition as that gives us better hardware remember:)
I too would be glad to see him go up, but only if he didn't come down again...;)
dave
Re:Secrecy failure in the entertainment industry
on
Distributed Security
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Once that secret gets out, the security is hopelessly compromised. The Germans learned this the hard way in WWII.
well, I'm not sure abot that. once the allies worked out how the enigma machines worked then german comms were not suddenly an open book. yes, we could set the early calculating machines (the bombes) and the first computer (collosus) to attwempting to work out the daily code but they needed help. alot of the breaks were where the germans were careless like sending weather reports first thing in the morning in a known format. if if you knew the weather was clear then you could capture the first msg of the day form place X and know that the cipher text matches the plaintext "the weather is clear". there was, of course, a bit more to it than that but thats a basic idea.
knowing the algorithm wasn't enough as the task, with no clues, was too computationally intensive for the technology of the day to solve, much like cracking public key is certainly do-able when you know the code, it's just not doable in any reasonable timeframe.
the clues that the allies got to what the cyphertext might decode to and the codebooks they captured contributed massively to the code breaking effort.
I'd say this this is both true and false. yes, you're quite right, if it's 18 times more expensive then plane engines are probably safe for a while, but only a while. technology marches on and those prices will come a tumbling down and it would be the beginning of the end for plane engines I think.
it's much like how we can turn lead into godl now, except the cost to do so is more then the value of you gold you get, doesn't mean it will always be so:)
actually think it's correct to put mouse and keyboard at the back. headphones, usb and firewire and all a) hotswap and b) likely to have things put in and taken out often. mouse and kayboard don't really follow the same ideal. when you put them in you're unlikely to want to remove them while the machine is on so you want to keep the untidy cables hidden away at the back.
you do not have the right to disregard them just because you feel like it's too restricting or useless
of course you do. you can do what you like. hack dvd players, reverse engineer software, kill people. you can do anything you like. you must just be prepared to face the consequences. bruce here is breaking the law and it appears that he is expecting to face the consequences. thats fair enough and it's his method of trying to get a stupid law overturned.
perhaps you think murder is a stupid law and should be overturned. go out, kill people, go wild, whatever. then you'll probably get arrested and if you like, you can make your case. perhaps the general public will believe you and that law will get overturned. it's the same principle.
as a matter of interest, everyone in the europe at least has the right and indeed duty to disregard any law that they consider unjust. this was determined by the nazi war crimes courts when faced with excuses of "I was ordered" and "it was the law"
"yes" they said, "you were ordered but that does not mean you should have done it. you should have refused and taken the consequences, even if it was death" (or wrds to that effect, and don't ask me for references, look em up yourself (for that read "I don't have any")).
well, my controller card comes with a dimm slot, I've got a 64meg dimm in it, once stuff is in the cache it can make a huge difference... of course my controller is a 4 channel caching scsi raid controller that I got off ebay:)
And also, I happened notice how you specifically failed to mention the reasonable improvements made in recent versions of Windows - specifically how its around ~10% attack feasability compared to 100% with older versions.
well, to be honest, it's not the most uptodate thing in the world. the freebsd tested was 4.2. and there have been significant improvements in tcp sequencing since then (being as we're at 4.6 now) and there is even a kernel compilation flag for random sequences.
so it's probably a year out of date, don't feel so singled out
While this would be true, it could still be argued (successfully) that the emulator would have a negative impact on potential future revenue of LucasArts products, such as a LucasArts Classics package for BSD.
yes, it probably could be argued as such.. so what?
it could also be argued that linux has a negative impact on the potential future revenue of m$ windows.
whats your point. scummvm ain't illegal (well, ain't illegal everywhere, who knows with america these days, I'd say "thank goodness I'm in the UK" but I'm sure we'll be following suit soon enough *sigh*)
it's a clean room re-engineering project. it allows you to play old games that you're bought (or aquired, but thats your issue, not theirs) on your new uberbox.
ahh fuck. sorry, this post was half written when I accidentally hit the "back a page" gesture in opera... now I've got to re-write it... bugger
right, lets try and reember what crap I was spewing last time:)
Should an Aussie have "got there first" and "registered".uk, how do you think the UK government would react?
good point, bad specific example:) the UK gov would be using their *actual* iso country code of.gb instead, yup, thats right, the UK is, afaik, the only country in the world whose cctld is not their ISO 2 letter country code..gb even exists (as a frozen cctld), go forth and zone transfer folks, check out the one domain within it and the 2 dozen machines at malvern.
anyways, lets ignore that technicality, I know the point you are trying to make. if some aussie had managed to register and get to control.uk then I can see how british businesses/gov might be annoyed. but that is an issue they can take up with icann. perhaps they shouldn't have given control away to some random aussie but you can't demand that the aussie give back control, why should he? esp if he's doing a good job. he can have control taken from him by icann but thats between the two of them.
By ICANN's own rules (see my other/. postings) any change to the manager/management of a ccTLD has to be approved by the national government. Mike Lawrie's role was never approved in the first place, because the government back then (pre-democracy) was, quite frankly, not interested.
yes, back when the.za control was handed to lawrie, the gov wasn't interested. does that mean that they should have held back until a gov *was* interested? za needed a cctld and it needed one to be adminned locally so they skirted some of the rules to allow it to happen. understandable and they don't seem to have made a bad decision.
now the gov has decided that it wants to play too, fair enough, if they, icann and lawrie can come to a nice amicable result then all's well and good. but thats not what they want to do. they have decided that they *will* have control. well, thats not how it works. and nor should it be. they came in late in the game and they should abide by the rules that exist. the rules state the for control to transfer then all three parties (icann, the old admin and the new admin) must all agree. they don't.
dns entries aren't like food, water, gold, electricity etc. they are not a national resource. they are entries in a database. they are convenient and they are pretty empheral.
it's like companies sueing MAPS to get their mailserver ip's off the rbl lists. I'm sorry but imho, tough. it's paul vixie's database (it is him isn't it) that he allows other people to access. he can do with it as he damn well pleases and who are you or I to say what goes in?
dns is the same (err, very as they use the same protocol). sure icann have their own rules and regs about it and want it to be ubiqitous, and it pretty much is, but I fail to see why the za gov should be able to take control of their bit by force. if the current admin doesn't think that they will do a good job of it, perhaps he has a point?
imho, if the za gov wanted in on making decisions for the za domain then they should have been there at the start, the fact that it is now a different gov is irrelevant. if they want in then they can go about things properly.
and you're supporting the decision of one man to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government?
you say that like I should be considered a pariah for thinking so. yes, I do think that any man has the right to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government. it is perhaps an extreme example but nazi soldiers were instructed to kill jews by their democratically elected government. it wasn't a very good excuse when the war trials started as they were told that they should have disobeyed.
(*sigh* okay, hitlers party was, iirc elected democratically, then there were some political shenanigans, but afaik he had the support of the majority of the german ppl when the war started)(yeah, I've ont read the history in depth, I think my point is still valid thought)(and yes, I kow I'm skating very close to godwins law, but note that I'm not comparing anyone *to* a nazi or indeed, to hitler, just drawing an analogy that just because one is told to do something by "the law" doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean that he should obey)(and yes twy, if you want to invoke godwins law then just say so and I'll shut up:)
so yes, I can honestly say that I can easily picture many situations where one man can, and should stand up to instructions given to him by a democratically elected government. perhaps he is right to do so, perhaps he is wrong, but I respect his right to make his own decisions and he will be accountable for them.
WIPO recognises domain names as property.
and this is considered a good thing? the idea in general has it's merits (and demerits) but their implementation sucks. in fact this is possibly similar to the discussoin we're having. the idea of the za gov controlling the za domain has it's merits but what will the implemenation be like? I would consider mike lawrie to be reasonably well qualified to make that judgement.
Lawrie doesn't have the right to administer the.za namespace against the government's will.
I would say that the za gov has no implicit *right* to administer the.za namespace against icann's will.
okay, I'm actually not sure but I think you're argueing that.za should be handed over to the gov but tell me twy, why *should* the za gov have control over the za domain? why is the.za domain considered "property" that should belong to the gubbinment?
if I set up a name of microsoft.fyonn.net then should m$ have control over where I point that name? should they be able to stop me pointing it at freebsd.org? no, because it's merely a logical construct I might put in place to help me. thats all DNS is, it's a logical construct to make things easier. what is classically referred to as global DNS is merely a set of dynamic replies to computer based queries. it's "run" by ICANN (for all their faults) and they get to decide what domains get adminstrated where, it is their system and their root servers after all (in essence). if ppl are sufficiently pissed off with their decisoins then they can setup their own root servers or use some of the ones already provided.
how can the za gov nationalise something which is determined overseas? the root servers determine which DNS servers maintain the za domain, and their ain't a thing the za gov can do about it. it's like trying to nationalise imports, you may get a temp victory but the ppl sending the stuff will merely send it somewhere else.
as far as I can see mike lawrie is doing his job. he has been given the task of admining the za domain to the best interests of the za internet community. he has decided that in his opinion, he does not want the za gov to control the domain as he thinks that it will not be in the best interests of the za internet community and he has done what he thinks he needs to do to keep tihngs running smoothly. if ICANN think he is wrong then they can take the job away from him.
DNS, just like the internet, is just a big group of people co-operating with each other. if you piss those other people off then they can just stop sharing their toys with you. the internet is not a right, it's a priveledge (you know, just like spandex;)(name that reference twy, you know you can:). it's not a basic requirement of human life, nor a natural resource. it's something put together by companies, institutions and even governments in an act of co-operation. withoutthe co-operation of others then you won't get far.
well, they they only stole the name from this, they just modified someone elses codec iirc.
and yes, the perishable dvd was mooted (along with the original DivX) as being wonder ways to leech more money out of you.
iirc DivX discs would be really cheap to buy (like a pound or two) and you'd phone up and purchase a viewing over the phone and then the player would dial in and "use" that playing when you watched it. whenever you wanted to watch, you phone (credit card at the ready of course).
thats not the DivX he was referring to. DivX was also the name of an abortive dvd standard where the players would phone home and ask if you had permission to watch the film (or some such). unsurprisingly people thoght it was a horrible idea and it died the death it deserved... I'm sure that DivX 2 is just waiting round the corner for us though...
I actually kinda like the little clicking of harddisks in the background. it reminds me that all is well in the world. I want the rest of it to be quiet, but I find the light clicks kinda relaxing.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't a case of fighting an uber-huge corporation that has billions of dollars to spare. This guy is effectively cheating a good source of revenue out of a photographer who is trying to earn a living.
you seem to be argueing that he doesn't have a valid point because the photographer isn't rich. how wealthy the person is, is completely irrelevant to whether he is right or not.
dave
you're implying that ownership of the media is the same as ownership of the IP on that media.
the content on the negatives was not created by the photographer, they may have used their skill to capture the right moments, but they did not create those moments, they merely framed them well, as they were hired to do. why should they own the copyright?
I'm not saying that photography is easy just that they are being hired to create something so the copyright should belong to the person who paid for the creation, thats how it works in other lines of content creation work.
paid coders don't own their work, paid musicians often don't own their work. I doubt that the ppl employed to write the manual for a cisco pix own the copyright on that, whats the difference?
in fact, lets look at that last example. the authors of the cisco pix manual didn't create the pix firmware, or even the pix itself. they merely created a work with pix firmware as a primary subject and used their own skills in writing to produce a manual. this is the same as a photographer. he does not create the subject matter, he merely captures parts of it and presents it nicely, doing precisely what he's paid to do, so why should he keep copyright and not the technical author(s)?
if the married couple to be signed a contract with the photographer explicitly giving away rights to the photo's then fair enough (although that still sucks, I do at least grant it's perfectly legal) but if it's an assumed thing then I think it's wrong.
dave
well, while I don't know for a fact if US law matches UK law on this issue (I really, realy think it does), if you are contracted by person A do create something then the copyright belongs to person A by default. ie microsoft employer lots and lots of ppl to create things for them (ie software) but the copyright doesn't rest with the individual coders but with the company that employs them, ie m$.
now in uk law, if you create something in work hours that has nothing to do with you job whatsoever, then you have a case to keep your copyright, in fact if you create something that is to do with your job but it's so amazing that no-one would have expected such a miraculous thing to have come from the boring shit you were working on, then you also have a case to keep it (that one surprised me), however, in this situation it seems to me like you are hiring the photographer to create something (ie a nice photo) for you. you are paying them to do work therefore the copyright should belong to you (unless signed away by contract with the photographer beforehand).
does this not make sense (both common and legal)?
dave
well, there is no requirement for video to be analogue, I'm using a digital video output (dvi, another connector for you) to connect my gfx card to my tft screen.
dave
well, for me it's because linux has little foibles that annoy me. I like the way freebsd works. the way of updating the base system, the cleanness of the /etc directory. it's a matter of personal preference really. I never really liked compiling kernels on linux and the spraying of user installed apps all over the filesystem. I find freebsd to be "neater" and I know it better than I know linux.
most of the things I use are available in source form and compile wonderfully on freebsd. other apps I run under linux emulation (including, I might add, unreal tournament with full 3d hardware acceleration, I'm hoping to get simcity 3ku linux working this week (after it arrives that is).
dave
only good if you're running linux. I play ut under freebsd using the linux client and an nvidia card is damn all good to me there. I use an ati radeon instead because I can get HW accelerated 3d in that. besides, we want competition as that gives us better hardware remember :)
dave
Also, I assume pokies are banned
educate a poor brit would you, wtf are pokies?
dave
I too would be glad to see him go up, but only if he didn't come down again... ;)
dave
Once that secret gets out, the security is hopelessly compromised. The Germans learned this the hard way in WWII.
well, I'm not sure abot that. once the allies worked out how the enigma machines worked then german comms were not suddenly an open book. yes, we could set the early calculating machines (the bombes) and the first computer (collosus) to attwempting to work out the daily code but they needed help. alot of the breaks were where the germans were careless like sending weather reports first thing in the morning in a known format. if if you knew the weather was clear then you could capture the first msg of the day form place X and know that the cipher text matches the plaintext "the weather is clear". there was, of course, a bit more to it than that but thats a basic idea.
knowing the algorithm wasn't enough as the task, with no clues, was too computationally intensive for the technology of the day to solve, much like cracking public key is certainly do-able when you know the code, it's just not doable in any reasonable timeframe.
the clues that the allies got to what the cyphertext might decode to and the codebooks they captured contributed massively to the code breaking effort.
dave
and TCP/IP is based on packet switched networks which is a UK invention :)
dave
I'd say this this is both true and false. yes, you're quite right, if it's 18 times more expensive then plane engines are probably safe for a while, but only a while. technology marches on and those prices will come a tumbling down and it would be the beginning of the end for plane engines I think.
:)
it's much like how we can turn lead into godl now, except the cost to do so is more then the value of you gold you get, doesn't mean it will always be so
dave
it might wipe wout life as we know it, but even so, it would still be pretty neat.
dave
thats a very dangerous risk, you never know, one of your competitors might actually discover it and all your engines will be useless perhaps :)
dave
lol, I was just thinking of him when I read the preceeding comment, I really should play those games again...
dave
actually think it's correct to put mouse and keyboard at the back. headphones, usb and firewire and all a) hotswap and b) likely to have things put in and taken out often. mouse and kayboard don't really follow the same ideal. when you put them in you're unlikely to want to remove them while the machine is on so you want to keep the untidy cables hidden away at the back.
thats why I think they made that decision.
dave
Do you consider those who threw tea into the Boston river 'childish' as well ?
;)
well, us brits did
you know, many people think that britain doesn't celebrate thanksgiving. of course it does. it's just that our thanksiving is on the 4th of july...
hohoho
well, I thought it was funny..
dave
you do not have the right to disregard them just because you feel like it's too restricting or useless
of course you do. you can do what you like. hack dvd players, reverse engineer software, kill people. you can do anything you like. you must just be prepared to face the consequences. bruce here is breaking the law and it appears that he is expecting to face the consequences. thats fair enough and it's his method of trying to get a stupid law overturned.
perhaps you think murder is a stupid law and should be overturned. go out, kill people, go wild, whatever. then you'll probably get arrested and if you like, you can make your case. perhaps the general public will believe you and that law will get overturned. it's the same principle.
as a matter of interest, everyone in the europe at least has the right and indeed duty to disregard any law that they consider unjust. this was determined by the nazi war crimes courts when faced with excuses of "I was ordered" and "it was the law"
"yes" they said, "you were ordered but that does not mean you should have done it. you should have refused and taken the consequences, even if it was death" (or wrds to that effect, and don't ask me for references, look em up yourself (for that read "I don't have any")).
dave
well, my controller card comes with a dimm slot, I've got a 64meg dimm in it, once stuff is in the cache it can make a huge difference... of course my controller is a 4 channel caching scsi raid controller that I got off ebay :)
dave
And also, I happened notice how you specifically failed to mention the reasonable improvements made in recent versions of Windows - specifically how its around ~10% attack feasability compared to 100% with older versions.
well, to be honest, it's not the most uptodate thing in the world. the freebsd tested was 4.2. and there have been significant improvements in tcp sequencing since then (being as we're at 4.6 now) and there is even a kernel compilation flag for random sequences.
so it's probably a year out of date, don't feel so singled out
dave
While this would be true, it could still be argued (successfully) that the emulator would have a negative impact on potential future revenue of LucasArts products, such as a LucasArts Classics package for BSD.
yes, it probably could be argued as such.. so what?
it could also be argued that linux has a negative impact on the potential future revenue of m$ windows.
whats your point. scummvm ain't illegal (well, ain't illegal everywhere, who knows with america these days, I'd say "thank goodness I'm in the UK" but I'm sure we'll be following suit soon enough *sigh*)
it's a clean room re-engineering project. it allows you to play old games that you're bought (or aquired, but thats your issue, not theirs) on your new uberbox.
tough shit as far as I am concerned
dave
ahh fuck. sorry, this post was half written when I accidentally hit the "back a page" gesture in opera... now I've got to re-write it... bugger
.uk, how do you think the UK government would react?
:) the UK gov would be using their *actual* iso country code of .gb instead, yup, thats right, the UK is, afaik, the only country in the world whose cctld is not their ISO 2 letter country code. .gb even exists (as a frozen cctld), go forth and zone transfer folks, check out the one domain within it and the 2 dozen machines at malvern.
.uk then I can see how british businesses/gov might be annoyed. but that is an issue they can take up with icann. perhaps they shouldn't have given control away to some random aussie but you can't demand that the aussie give back control, why should he? esp if he's doing a good job. he can have control taken from him by icann but thats between the two of them.
/. postings) any change to the manager/management of a ccTLD has to be approved by the national government. Mike Lawrie's role was never approved in the first place, because the government back then (pre-democracy) was, quite frankly, not interested.
.za control was handed to lawrie, the gov wasn't interested. does that mean that they should have held back until a gov *was* interested? za needed a cctld and it needed one to be adminned locally so they skirted some of the rules to allow it to happen. understandable and they don't seem to have made a bad decision.
:)
.za namespace against the government's will.
.za namespace against icann's will.
right, lets try and reember what crap I was spewing last time:)
Should an Aussie have "got there first" and "registered"
good point, bad specific example
anyways, lets ignore that technicality, I know the point you are trying to make. if some aussie had managed to register and get to control
By ICANN's own rules (see my other
yes, back when the
now the gov has decided that it wants to play too, fair enough, if they, icann and lawrie can come to a nice amicable result then all's well and good. but thats not what they want to do. they have decided that they *will* have control. well, thats not how it works. and nor should it be. they came in late in the game and they should abide by the rules that exist. the rules state the for control to transfer then all three parties (icann, the old admin and the new admin) must all agree. they don't.
dns entries aren't like food, water, gold, electricity etc. they are not a national resource. they are entries in a database. they are convenient and they are pretty empheral.
it's like companies sueing MAPS to get their mailserver ip's off the rbl lists. I'm sorry but imho, tough. it's paul vixie's database (it is him isn't it) that he allows other people to access. he can do with it as he damn well pleases and who are you or I to say what goes in?
dns is the same (err, very as they use the same protocol). sure icann have their own rules and regs about it and want it to be ubiqitous, and it pretty much is, but I fail to see why the za gov should be able to take control of their bit by force. if the current admin doesn't think that they will do a good job of it, perhaps he has a point?
imho, if the za gov wanted in on making decisions for the za domain then they should have been there at the start, the fact that it is now a different gov is irrelevant. if they want in then they can go about things properly.
and you're supporting the decision of one man to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government?
you say that like I should be considered a pariah for thinking so. yes, I do think that any man has the right to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government. it is perhaps an extreme example but nazi soldiers were instructed to kill jews by their democratically elected government. it wasn't a very good excuse when the war trials started as they were told that they should have disobeyed.
(*sigh* okay, hitlers party was, iirc elected democratically, then there were some political shenanigans, but afaik he had the support of the majority of the german ppl when the war started)(yeah, I've ont read the history in depth, I think my point is still valid thought)(and yes, I kow I'm skating very close to godwins law, but note that I'm not comparing anyone *to* a nazi or indeed, to hitler, just drawing an analogy that just because one is told to do something by "the law" doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean that he should obey)(and yes twy, if you want to invoke godwins law then just say so and I'll shut up
so yes, I can honestly say that I can easily picture many situations where one man can, and should stand up to instructions given to him by a democratically elected government. perhaps he is right to do so, perhaps he is wrong, but I respect his right to make his own decisions and he will be accountable for them.
WIPO recognises domain names as property.
and this is considered a good thing? the idea in general has it's merits (and demerits) but their implementation sucks. in fact this is possibly similar to the discussoin we're having. the idea of the za gov controlling the za domain has it's merits but what will the implemenation be like? I would consider mike lawrie to be reasonably well qualified to make that judgement.
Lawrie doesn't have the right to administer the
I would say that the za gov has no implicit *right* to administer the
dave
good morning twylite :)
.za should be handed over to the gov but tell me twy, why *should* the za gov have control over the za domain? why is the .za domain considered "property" that should belong to the gubbinment?
;)(name that reference twy, you know you can:). it's not a basic requirement of human life, nor a natural resource. it's something put together by companies, institutions and even governments in an act of co-operation. withoutthe co-operation of others then you won't get far.
okay, I'm actually not sure but I think you're argueing that
if I set up a name of microsoft.fyonn.net then should m$ have control over where I point that name? should they be able to stop me pointing it at freebsd.org? no, because it's merely a logical construct I might put in place to help me. thats all DNS is, it's a logical construct to make things easier. what is classically referred to as global DNS is merely a set of dynamic replies to computer based queries. it's "run" by ICANN (for all their faults) and they get to decide what domains get adminstrated where, it is their system and their root servers after all (in essence). if ppl are sufficiently pissed off with their decisoins then they can setup their own root servers or use some of the ones already provided.
how can the za gov nationalise something which is determined overseas? the root servers determine which DNS servers maintain the za domain, and their ain't a thing the za gov can do about it. it's like trying to nationalise imports, you may get a temp victory but the ppl sending the stuff will merely send it somewhere else.
as far as I can see mike lawrie is doing his job. he has been given the task of admining the za domain to the best interests of the za internet community. he has decided that in his opinion, he does not want the za gov to control the domain as he thinks that it will not be in the best interests of the za internet community and he has done what he thinks he needs to do to keep tihngs running smoothly. if ICANN think he is wrong then they can take the job away from him.
DNS, just like the internet, is just a big group of people co-operating with each other. if you piss those other people off then they can just stop sharing their toys with you. the internet is not a right, it's a priveledge (you know, just like spandex
dave
PS. or am I just winding you up?
well, they they only stole the name from this, they just modified someone elses codec iirc.
:)
and yes, the perishable dvd was mooted (along with the original DivX) as being wonder ways to leech more money out of you.
iirc DivX discs would be really cheap to buy (like a pound or two) and you'd phone up and purchase a viewing over the phone and then the player would dial in and "use" that playing when you watched it. whenever you wanted to watch, you phone (credit card at the ready of course).
yeah, cos I'd buy that for a dollar
dave
thats not the DivX he was referring to. DivX was also the name of an abortive dvd standard where the players would phone home and ask if you had permission to watch the film (or some such). unsurprisingly people thoght it was a horrible idea and it died the death it deserved... I'm sure that DivX 2 is just waiting round the corner for us though...
dave
I actually kinda like the little clicking of harddisks in the background. it reminds me that all is well in the world. I want the rest of it to be quiet, but I find the light clicks kinda relaxing.
dave