People might be using them to duplicate music CD's, after all, and that's (gasp!) illegal.
I'm not so sure that duplicating a CD is illegal. This is known as a backup copy. Oh, you meant in quantity for distribution? That's a different matter.
You definitely have the right under some audio home recording act or other, to make a cassette tape of an LP for playing in your car. So why would this be different?
OpenOffice 1.1 RC1 seemed to open the first Welcome presentation pretty well. (Haven't tried others yet.) A few font problems where some lines wrapped around in a way that was not obviously intended. Otherwise, everything looked right and was viewable.
Even when the filters were installed, corruption of data was common.
Are you trying to suggest that the creators of Microsoft Word somehow got the idea that a word processor does to documents what a food processor does to food?
If you want to program OOo, you need to learn UNO.
On Windows, you can program OOo from any application that works with automation. (i.e. Visual Basic, Delphi, MS Visual FoxPro, etc.)
OOo can be programmed from any language for which a complete UNO bridge has been written. Recently Python was just added as a first-class language.
AppleScript could have an UNO bridge written for it. (Perhaps as a scripting extension. You know what I'm talking about if you are a Mac user.) But AppleScript's typical syntax way of scripting applications is definitely NOT how you will work with OOo. It involves a lot of method calls and objects.
Perhaps a scripting extension could be written that accepts AppleEvents, and therefore within AppleScript uses a syntax more conventional for AppleScript users. But such a thing would be completely outside of OOo proper. As a Mac user who has moved to Linux, I wouldn't care much. But there may be someone who would have the motivation to build such a thing.
See
this
for examples of the dabbling I have done for OOo in three languages: StarBasic, Java and MS Visual FoxPro. The link takes you to a directory where you can download Danny's Draw Power Tools. (Click "parent directory" to find other things. But especially the Turtle Graphics tutorial for OOo.)
My favorite of the Draw Power Tools is Flower Gears. I had a lot of fun writing it. What is it? It is like a certian toy whose name I won't mention that you might have had as a child. A plastic ring has gear teeth on its inside. A smaller wheel with gear teeth rides along the inside of the ring. You put a ball point pen through a hole in the smaller inner wheel and create drawings that can resemble a flower. This tool lets you enter the parameters (such as number of gear teeth) and then creates an OOo Drawing of the figure.
With release 1.1 on the way, wouldn't it make sense to wait until after that release to buy a book about it?
Not really.
I use OOo and always upgrade to the latest beta releases. Several opinions. I think these are informed opinions of an OOo user...
From 1.1 Beta 2 to 1.1 RC1 there are unlikely to be any feature improvements.
From 1.1 RC1 to 1.1 final, there are unlikely to be any feature improvements.
I have reported a number of bugs in 1.0.x and even in 1.1 beta 1, and have watched the issues go all the way through the system with an actual bug fix and verify. (I just got an e-mail last night that a bug fix was verified.)
1.1 Final may have fewer bugs, but probably not any thing that would change a single screenshot or other text in the book.
I understand copyright law very well actually. Your points are indeed correct, and I already understand this.
The reason I describe your scheme as simply convoluted is this: you can download all the random bits you want, but the moment you reassemble or decode them into copyrighted material, you've violated copyright laws.
And I understand this full well. My convoluted scheme was not about avoiding copyright law at all. With what I was suggesting, you would indeed reconstruct a copyrighted work. But you would do so in the privacy of your own home. Nobody else could see you do it, even with full monitoring of every packet that comes to your computer.
Even if the RIAA does a brute force analysis of trying to combine every possible combination of received blocks to determine that three certian blocks reconstitute a fragment of a copyright work, that doesn't proove that I went after the copyright work, nor that I actually reconstructed it. Just that I received some randomish bits from different sites that could be XOR'ed together to form a fragment of a copyright work.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
So that you don't get beaten to a bloody pulp, or have to watch your family members tortured. Is that good reason?
But obviously we should not encourage the development of technologies that allow you to freely exchange information.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
Let's see, I received blocks A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3.
A = A1 XOR A2 XOR X3
B = B1 XOR B2 XOR B3
C = C1 XOR C2 XOR C3
Now which of the nine blocks are copyright infringing? A, B and C together are a copyright infringement. But....
A1 XOR ??zz11?? is part of the declaration of independence.
A2 XOR ??ss33?? is part of the Bible.
A3 XOR ??32kk?? is part of Kernel 2.6-pre1
Well, I think I've just answered the question. Obviously block A3 was the copyright infringement, because it can be XORed together with another block to produce the commie operating system that is responsible for all this piracy.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, blocks A1, A2 and A3 are all obviously part of protected free speech. Each block A1, A2 and A3 passes all known statistical tests for randomness. Yet each block when XOR'ed together with some other block from Pr0n-2-Pr0n-Share yields something obviously protected.
Now in my example I've labeled the blocks A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc. But suppose the real blocks were labeled...
etc. so that it is not so obvious that any block has any actual relationship to any other block. In fact, you can probably retrieve multiple blocks from the system, by key, and construct many protected works. Which individual block should be banned? Which block is the culprit that infringes copyright?
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
Obviously the blocks are not random if they reconstruct the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. But each individual block passes all statistical tests for randomness.
What if every packet of a file you received had to "bounce" through another node on a gnutella-like network?
Okay, so you downloaded a file, but from where? Five thousand different nodes sent you parts of the file.
Better yet, what if no file is actually ever sent, but randomish blocks of bits that must be XOR'ed together to reconstitute the file. This means that a file takes double or tripple the bandwidth to download. But which other node sending you a randomish block of bits was guilty of copyright infringements? Said differently, where did you download the file from? Can someone monitoring your traffic even know that you downloaded a file? Can we even make this work in the presence of someone running a packet sniffer. If each incomming packet indicates which "fileid" or "ssa checksum" it is part of, which block, and which XOR part.
You've now eliminated the spoofed packets problem of getting blocked at firewalls. A downloaded file arrives as many UDP packets from thousands of different nodes. No single such packet contains any copyright material, just random bits.
The node sending out the file has to send out two or three copies. Each block of the mp3 file is XOR'ed with a random number. The random number and the result XOR block are two blocks that must be XOR'ed back together to reconstitute the original block. Repeat this process on one of the two halfs, and you've now got three blocks, if you care to use three times the bandwidth to upload/download a file to ensure that no single block has copyright content.
Suppose someone has a very large collection of vinyl lp's.
Suppose he/she has lots of this same music also on CD's.
Suppose this person has so much music that if they go searching for mp3 copies of everything they have on vinyl, they will be downloading a large enough volume to be visible on your radar.
After downloading this person now has all of the music in both analog and digital formats.
Is this person within their rights to have both formats?
Now, the only clarification we might add is to prefix this entire question with one preface: Once upon a time, music was available in this strange format called vinyl lp's.
maybe the ((((c++)++)++)++)... system will induce LISP-hackers to take a serious look at the language.
That you would say this indicates that you don't really know what Lisp is all about.
Clue: It is not about parenthesis. It is about langauge semantics.
Everyone gets so hung up on the surface syntax that they never see what is underneath. Very much like comparing Windows 95 to a Macintosh of the same era. Once you understand the true power of what is underneath, then the syntax has a very strong reason for being. The annoyance of using a somewhat unconventional syntax is vastly outweighed by the power it is exchanged for.
Don't you think that any serious Lisp user would take a serious look at other languages?
It depends on the stakes. We don't necessarily want to actually have to strike. Perhaps the imminent threat of a strike can prevent the bad guy from doing action X. The actual strike may not be able to prevent this action. The threat may prevent action X, even though the actual strike would not.
Finally, some megalomaniac dictators could miscalculate. Have you ever known that to happen before? Now, depending on how sane the dictator is, the actual launch of bombers may do what the threat of ICBM's would not do.
As a pure thought experiment, imagine a hypothetical magalomaniac dictator. Let's call him SoDumb Insane just for reference. Dictator issues lots of blustering words. Dictator does something bad. Bombers are launched. SoDumb's henchmen inform him that they can detect the bomber on radar above the atmosphere. A bomb can be in his bedroom in minutes. Could this have an effect that the threat of an ICBM launch might not have? The launch of the expensive, although not necessarily reusable bomber also signals a certian level of resolve.
Microsoft has never used patents in court for anything except defense.
Well there is the
story
of Microsoft not using patents for defense. Whether it is actually true is unknown to me.
But then there is Stac Electronics, and others. And given Microsoft's sterling reputation for high moral standards and ethical behavior, I wouldn't be surprised.
Can somebody explain to me WTF the difference between audio and data CDRs is?.... Or is there something I'm missing?
There is something you're missing.
Music CD-R's cost more because they include a fee that goes to the RIAA members to compensate them for the inevitable piracy that will occur using the blank CD-R you just purchased. After all, nobody could possibly be buying a "music" CD-R unless they were going to put someone else's copyright material on it. It is simply not possible that you could record music onto a blank recording material without owing the RIAA some money.
So when you are going to record music, be sure to use Music CD-R's so that the RIAA gets paid, even though it might be your very own music or other audio recording. Of course, recording copyright content onto a Music CD-R still doesn't make it legal. That's hypocracy.
I was never a fan of wasting power. All my PCs turn off the monitor when idle!
If the monitor is an LCD screen, it very well may be powered by a wall-wart or brick type transformer. Even when turned off, there is some power draw. Just how many watts does an LCD display transformer draw anyway? (I don't actually know.) 20 watts? 40 watts? And how much is this vs. a CRT?
When an LCD turns off it's backlight, or goes into "sleep" mode, how much power does it draw? If it were a tiny amount, like a digital clock that you leave plugged in anyway to wake you up in the morning, then should you really be concerned about it? Again, I don't have any actual hard numbers here. Just raising questions.
we have Dell LCD's here, and they do burn in... it's *very* irritating. a reboot has fixed it, up to now..
Yeah. Me to. My LCD has this blue tint burned into it with a hint of lots white text numbers and something that says something about pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del.
This does not help nor hurt SCO. It helps their current shareholders. Which happen to be, the people who are doing these actions, in order to get bought. In other words, you are proposing that we do exactly what they are wanting us to do. Buy them to make this go away.
If IBM won't just buy them to make them go away, then why should we? IBM has much more interest at stake. It would cost IBM significantly less than $3 Billion.
Doing this also sends a message that a viable business model is...
Sue some major company promoting any particular Open Source project
once upon a time, you were required to show you were working for the public good in order to be given articles of incorporation.
There are two ways you can be eligible to receive articles of incorporation. (In most states of the US.) Merely satisfy EITHER of the following requirements...
Show that you are working towards the good of the public
Show that you are working towards the good of elected or appointed officials.
The second item nowdays is considered redundant, as the first item actually means the second one, and vice versa.
Slashdot Mirror
People might be using them to duplicate music CD's, after all, and that's (gasp!) illegal.
I'm not so sure that duplicating a CD is illegal. This is known as a backup copy. Oh, you meant in quantity for distribution? That's a different matter.
You definitely have the right under some audio home recording act or other, to make a cassette tape of an LP for playing in your car. So why would this be different?
Please indicate which ones.
Really, for shame. You know better than this. You read the article.
OpenOffice 1.1 RC1 seemed to open the first Welcome presentation pretty well. (Haven't tried others yet.) A few font problems where some lines wrapped around in a way that was not obviously intended. Otherwise, everything looked right and was viewable.
Even when the filters were installed, corruption of data was common.
Are you trying to suggest that the creators of Microsoft Word somehow got the idea that a word processor does to documents what a food processor does to food?
If you want to program OOo, you need to learn UNO.
On Windows, you can program OOo from any application that works with automation. (i.e. Visual Basic, Delphi, MS Visual FoxPro, etc.)
OOo can be programmed from any language for which a complete UNO bridge has been written. Recently Python was just added as a first-class language.
AppleScript could have an UNO bridge written for it. (Perhaps as a scripting extension. You know what I'm talking about if you are a Mac user.) But AppleScript's typical syntax way of scripting applications is definitely NOT how you will work with OOo. It involves a lot of method calls and objects.
Perhaps a scripting extension could be written that accepts AppleEvents, and therefore within AppleScript uses a syntax more conventional for AppleScript users. But such a thing would be completely outside of OOo proper. As a Mac user who has moved to Linux, I wouldn't care much. But there may be someone who would have the motivation to build such a thing.
See this for examples of the dabbling I have done for OOo in three languages: StarBasic, Java and MS Visual FoxPro. The link takes you to a directory where you can download Danny's Draw Power Tools. (Click "parent directory" to find other things. But especially the Turtle Graphics tutorial for OOo.)
My favorite of the Draw Power Tools is Flower Gears. I had a lot of fun writing it. What is it? It is like a certian toy whose name I won't mention that you might have had as a child. A plastic ring has gear teeth on its inside. A smaller wheel with gear teeth rides along the inside of the ring. You put a ball point pen through a hole in the smaller inner wheel and create drawings that can resemble a flower. This tool lets you enter the parameters (such as number of gear teeth) and then creates an OOo Drawing of the figure.
Not really.
I use OOo and always upgrade to the latest beta releases. Several opinions. I think these are informed opinions of an OOo user...
- From 1.1 Beta 2 to 1.1 RC1 there are unlikely to be any feature improvements.
- From 1.1 RC1 to 1.1 final, there are unlikely to be any feature improvements.
I have reported a number of bugs in 1.0.x and even in 1.1 beta 1, and have watched the issues go all the way through the system with an actual bug fix and verify. (I just got an e-mail last night that a bug fix was verified.)1.1 Final may have fewer bugs, but probably not any thing that would change a single screenshot or other text in the book.
To make it clearer for you....
I understand copyright law very well actually. Your points are indeed correct, and I already understand this.
The reason I describe your scheme as simply convoluted is this: you can download all the random bits you want, but the moment you reassemble or decode them into copyrighted material, you've violated copyright laws.
And I understand this full well. My convoluted scheme was not about avoiding copyright law at all. With what I was suggesting, you would indeed reconstruct a copyrighted work. But you would do so in the privacy of your own home. Nobody else could see you do it, even with full monitoring of every packet that comes to your computer.
Even if the RIAA does a brute force analysis of trying to combine every possible combination of received blocks to determine that three certian blocks reconstitute a fragment of a copyright work, that doesn't proove that I went after the copyright work, nor that I actually reconstructed it. Just that I received some randomish bits from different sites that could be XOR'ed together to form a fragment of a copyright work.
See my reply about blocks a few posts up.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
So that you don't get beaten to a bloody pulp, or have to watch your family members tortured. Is that good reason?
But obviously we should not encourage the development of technologies that allow you to freely exchange information.
My point: tools have more than one use.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
4 1
3 6
9 9
Let's see, I received blocks A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3.
A = A1 XOR A2 XOR X3
B = B1 XOR B2 XOR B3
C = C1 XOR C2 XOR C3
Now which of the nine blocks are copyright infringing? A, B and C together are a copyright infringement. But....
A1 XOR ??zz11?? is part of the declaration of independence.
A2 XOR ??ss33?? is part of the Bible.
A3 XOR ??32kk?? is part of Kernel 2.6-pre1
Well, I think I've just answered the question. Obviously block A3 was the copyright infringement, because it can be XORed together with another block to produce the commie operating system that is responsible for all this piracy.
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, blocks A1, A2 and A3 are all obviously part of protected free speech. Each block A1, A2 and A3 passes all known statistical tests for randomness. Yet each block when XOR'ed together with some other block from Pr0n-2-Pr0n-Share yields something obviously protected.
Now in my example I've labeled the blocks A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc. But suppose the real blocks were labeled...
Block29857372892398572573289191283717289139871325
Block29857327919182712819281828960848373948677489
Block96848289128475738929878517877821911111111111
etc. so that it is not so obvious that any block has any actual relationship to any other block. In fact, you can probably retrieve multiple blocks from the system, by key, and construct many protected works. Which individual block should be banned? Which block is the culprit that infringes copyright?
Your scheme is a convoluted way of asking whether downloading a copyrighted work through an encrypted link (through which the work is broken up into little unreadable chunks) constitutes copyright infringement. Yes, it does.
Obviously the blocks are not random if they reconstruct the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. But each individual block passes all statistical tests for randomness.
What if every packet of a file you received had to "bounce" through another node on a gnutella-like network?
Okay, so you downloaded a file, but from where? Five thousand different nodes sent you parts of the file.
Better yet, what if no file is actually ever sent, but randomish blocks of bits that must be XOR'ed together to reconstitute the file. This means that a file takes double or tripple the bandwidth to download. But which other node sending you a randomish block of bits was guilty of copyright infringements? Said differently, where did you download the file from? Can someone monitoring your traffic even know that you downloaded a file? Can we even make this work in the presence of someone running a packet sniffer. If each incomming packet indicates which "fileid" or "ssa checksum" it is part of, which block, and which XOR part.
You've now eliminated the spoofed packets problem of getting blocked at firewalls. A downloaded file arrives as many UDP packets from thousands of different nodes. No single such packet contains any copyright material, just random bits.
The node sending out the file has to send out two or three copies. Each block of the mp3 file is XOR'ed with a random number. The random number and the result XOR block are two blocks that must be XOR'ed back together to reconstitute the original block. Repeat this process on one of the two halfs, and you've now got three blocks, if you care to use three times the bandwidth to upload/download a file to ensure that no single block has copyright content.
Rephrase the question. Sort of like this...
Suppose someone has a very large collection of vinyl lp's.
Suppose he/she has lots of this same music also on CD's.
Suppose this person has so much music that if they go searching for mp3 copies of everything they have on vinyl, they will be downloading a large enough volume to be visible on your radar.
After downloading this person now has all of the music in both analog and digital formats.
Is this person within their rights to have both formats?
Now, the only clarification we might add is to prefix this entire question with one preface: Once upon a time, music was available in this strange format called vinyl lp's.
You mean as in Bumpers. Rubber Baby Buggy.
maybe the ((((c++)++)++)++)... system will induce LISP-hackers to take a serious look at the language.
That you would say this indicates that you don't really know what Lisp is all about.
Clue: It is not about parenthesis. It is about langauge semantics.
Everyone gets so hung up on the surface syntax that they never see what is underneath. Very much like comparing Windows 95 to a Macintosh of the same era. Once you understand the true power of what is underneath, then the syntax has a very strong reason for being. The annoyance of using a somewhat unconventional syntax is vastly outweighed by the power it is exchanged for.
Don't you think that any serious Lisp user would take a serious look at other languages?
Well Massachusetts has weird laws
Oh really? In Boston for instance, it is illegal to bathe without the authorization of a physician.
I thought ascii pr0n was supposed to look like strange green symbols descending from the top of the screen.
The imaging program works for the matrix. Or some such quote like that.
It depends on the stakes. We don't necessarily want to actually have to strike. Perhaps the imminent threat of a strike can prevent the bad guy from doing action X. The actual strike may not be able to prevent this action. The threat may prevent action X, even though the actual strike would not.
Finally, some megalomaniac dictators could miscalculate. Have you ever known that to happen before? Now, depending on how sane the dictator is, the actual launch of bombers may do what the threat of ICBM's would not do.
As a pure thought experiment, imagine a hypothetical magalomaniac dictator. Let's call him SoDumb Insane just for reference. Dictator issues lots of blustering words. Dictator does something bad. Bombers are launched. SoDumb's henchmen inform him that they can detect the bomber on radar above the atmosphere. A bomb can be in his bedroom in minutes. Could this have an effect that the threat of an ICBM launch might not have? The launch of the expensive, although not necessarily reusable bomber also signals a certian level of resolve.
How do I parse thee? Let me count the ways.
Microsoft has never used patents in court for anything except defense.
Well there is the story of Microsoft not using patents for defense. Whether it is actually true is unknown to me.
But then there is Stac Electronics, and others. And given Microsoft's sterling reputation for high moral standards and ethical behavior, I wouldn't be surprised.
Can somebody explain to me WTF the difference between audio and data CDRs is? .... Or is there something I'm missing?
There is something you're missing.
Music CD-R's cost more because they include a fee that goes to the RIAA members to compensate them for the inevitable piracy that will occur using the blank CD-R you just purchased. After all, nobody could possibly be buying a "music" CD-R unless they were going to put someone else's copyright material on it. It is simply not possible that you could record music onto a blank recording material without owing the RIAA some money.
So when you are going to record music, be sure to use Music CD-R's so that the RIAA gets paid, even though it might be your very own music or other audio recording. Of course, recording copyright content onto a Music CD-R still doesn't make it legal. That's hypocracy.
I was never a fan of wasting power. All my PCs turn off the monitor when idle!
If the monitor is an LCD screen, it very well may be powered by a wall-wart or brick type transformer. Even when turned off, there is some power draw. Just how many watts does an LCD display transformer draw anyway? (I don't actually know.) 20 watts? 40 watts? And how much is this vs. a CRT?
When an LCD turns off it's backlight, or goes into "sleep" mode, how much power does it draw? If it were a tiny amount, like a digital clock that you leave plugged in anyway to wake you up in the morning, then should you really be concerned about it? Again, I don't have any actual hard numbers here. Just raising questions.
we have Dell LCD's here, and they do burn in... it's *very* irritating. a reboot has fixed it, up to now..
Yeah. Me to. My LCD has this blue tint burned into it with a hint of lots white text numbers and something that says something about pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del.
This does not help nor hurt SCO. It helps their current shareholders. Which happen to be, the people who are doing these actions, in order to get bought. In other words, you are proposing that we do exactly what they are wanting us to do. Buy them to make this go away.
If IBM won't just buy them to make them go away, then why should we? IBM has much more interest at stake. It would cost IBM significantly less than $3 Billion.
Doing this also sends a message that a viable business model is...
There are two ways you can be eligible to receive articles of incorporation. (In most states of the US.) Merely satisfy EITHER of the following requirements...
- Show that you are working towards the good of the public
- Show that you are working towards the good of elected or appointed officials.
The second item nowdays is considered redundant, as the first item actually means the second one, and vice versa.