> how do you encourage the creation of something that's already been created?
This is addressed nicely in the ecomomists' brief. The Disney argument might go like this: "if we get this windfall, we'll spend it on new creative projects."
The economists point out that if a profit-maximizing corporation had a potentially profitable project, they could seek funding from banks or investors. If the corporation has more money than profitable projects, they should invest those excess resources on something else.
A starving artist, they acknowledge, might not be able to get the same kind of investment that Disney can get. But for the starving artist to get anything out of extension, they would have to already own a copyright that was about to expire. And that, they point out, is unlikely.
Ok, so not everyone decided to give up email addresses that they may have been using for years. I wonder how many people who were forwarding emails decided to pay up to keep using it? That would be a far more interesting statistic.
I don't know if this really counts as changing the way people think about science, but it certainly changed the way I thought about my Science teacher...
The "classic" version of the experiment is to fill a steal ball with water and seal it shut. If you place the ball in the freezer, the next day you'll find that the force of crystallization was stronger than the steal and the ball will be split in two.
My High School physics teacher got a hold of some liquid nitrogen and wanted to do whole experiment during class. So he prepared the steal ball, filled a glass beaker (yes, glass) with the liquid nitrogen, and set the ball in. As everyone gathered around up close to watch, he did have a brief moment of sanity and decided that, perhaps he should move the whole thing into a bucket instead. And maybe we shouldn't stand quite so close. So he poured the whole thing into a plastic (yes, plastic) bucket, added more liquid nitrogen to account for the increased volume, and we waited.
The force was not only enough to break the steal ball, but enough to shatter the bottom of the bucket too. He didn't have enough liquid nitrogren left to demonstrate that a rose will shatter if frozen, but we kinda saw that effect already...
There really is no compromise here. If you can copy it for yourself, you can copy it for someone else. The Hollings Bill was, realistically, the only way to stop people from copying digital files. So either you destroy the $600 billion Tech industry or the $30 billion entertainment industry.
Hollings (Hollywood) realized the same thing we've all known for a long time when he (they) wrote the SSSCA: if you can program it, you can make it copy things. The only way to stop it is to make sure nothing can be touched by the consumer. It took Hollywood a while to finally understand that. SDMI showed it to them.
It's pointless to say that *I* have to accept some draconian law to save Hollywood. First, because only the most obscenely draconian law will work; and second, because it's THEIR salaries that are at risk. They need to find their new business models. Some may work, some may not.
Now, maybe no one will ever pay Mel Gibson $25 million to make films like The Patriot again. Maybe that's a shame. Maybe we'll have to resort to our local stage theatres for entertainment in the future. No one's buying Buggy Whips any more. Monks no longer have a monopoly on books, either. Entire industries do collapse.
Debian has both "powstatd" and "powstatd-crypt" packages. It's also one of the easiest UPS monitors I ever tried to set up (a nice test script can show how your cable responds to various events on the UPS, so no more guessing). The powstatd-crypt version allows a master (with the cable plugged in) to notify slaves via an encrypted channel. That is, of course, optional.
Perhaps you should read EFF's response, and possibly even Title 17, Chapter 12 where it says (as referenced by the EFF letter):
1201 (c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.
... (3)
Nothing in this section shall require that the design of, or
design and selection of parts and components for, a consumer
electronics, telecommunications, or computing product provide for
a response to any particular technological measure, so long as such
part or component, or the product in which such part or
component is integrated, does not otherwise fall within the
prohibitions of subsection (a)(2) or (b)(1).
1201 (f) Reverse Engineering
... (3)
The information acquired through the acts permitted under
paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may
be made available to others if the person referred to in
paragraph (1) or (2), as the case may be, provides such
information or means solely for the purpose of enabling
interoperability of an independently created computer program
with other programs, and to the extent that doing so does not
constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law
other than this section.
Actually, the only thing surprising here is that they're talking about it. Wall Street firms usually consider things like this their "competitive advantage" and don't want everyone to know what they're doing. They wouldn't mind if their competitors kept using more expensive proprietary hardware/software solutions...
> Needless to say, no one ever anticipated that particularly horrific use of airplanes...
I don't know why everyone always says this. In 1974, Samuel Byck attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon by hijacking a plane out of Dulles. His plan was to force the pilot to crash the plane into the White House.
Ok, so he was an idiot for not learning to fly the plane himself, but he had the idea. The Secret Service obviously worried about it, otherwise why would they hang out on the roof of the White House with Stinger Missiles?
The Japanese used planes as weapons with suicide-pilots during WW II.
Heck, even Tom Clancy wrote a book (Debt of Honor, MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS) that features a pilot who crashes a commercial plane into the Capitol.
Stop saying "no one ever thought about it before".
I like this story. Jupiter Media Metrix analyst David Card (who?) doesn't believe they'll really ship it, since "serious software companies don't ship open source."
This guy is apparently unaware of that AOL already relies on OSS like AOLserver.
The real problem has very little to do with software and very much to do with the people running the software.
I don't care how secure your unix system is, if your root password is "password" or you let root telnet into it, you're system is insecure. Selecting "unix" over "NT" should not save you money on insurance if it's the same moron running either machine.
Not to mention that there is some inherent risk in change. If you declare that "Unix is secure" and give a break to anyone using it, you're going to end up with a former NT administrator forced to admin a system he knows nothing about. (The same would be true in reverse.)
What's so complicated about Plucker? I'll admit that setting up your own script to scrape the web might be too complex for grandma, but you the provider can build a Plucker.pdb of your own site.
Users could then just download the plucker.prc (once) and then sync with your PDB whenever you update it. They never really have to install any of the desktop scripts at all as long as you provide them the PDBs.
I thought the new Copyright Treaty explicitly gives Copyright holders the right to use technological means. Any anti-anti-copying legislation would be in violation of the treaty, n'est pas?
Article 11
Obligations concerning Technological Measures
Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and
effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective
technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the
exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and
that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized
by the authors concerned or permitted by law.
Slashdot Mirror
> how do you encourage the creation of something that's already been created?
This is addressed nicely in the ecomomists' brief. The Disney argument might go like this: "if we get this windfall, we'll spend it on new creative projects."
The economists point out that if a profit-maximizing corporation had a potentially profitable project, they could seek funding from banks or investors. If the corporation has more money than profitable projects, they should invest those excess resources on something else.
A starving artist, they acknowledge, might not be able to get the same kind of investment that Disney can get. But for the starving artist to get anything out of extension, they would have to already own a copyright that was about to expire. And that, they point out, is unlikely.
> The kids still will be ill-prepared to work in any normal job...
Is that because anyone that took the time to understand a unix system could NEVER catch up to the someone who only ever point-and-clicked?
If you really thought the Gulf War was about democracy and not oil, you've got a lot of growing up to do. That whole bit about Freedom was just PR.
PS: The subject comes from Michael Moore's TV Nation. They were trying to find the slogan that best summarized the goals of the Gulf War.
Ok, so not everyone decided to give up email addresses that they may have been using for years. I wonder how many people who were forwarding emails decided to pay up to keep using it? That would be a far more interesting statistic.
I don't know if this really counts as changing the way people think about science, but it certainly changed the way I thought about my Science teacher...
The "classic" version of the experiment is to fill a steal ball with water and seal it shut. If you place the ball in the freezer, the next day you'll find that the force of crystallization was stronger than the steal and the ball will be split in two.
My High School physics teacher got a hold of some liquid nitrogen and wanted to do whole experiment during class. So he prepared the steal ball, filled a glass beaker (yes, glass) with the liquid nitrogen, and set the ball in. As everyone gathered around up close to watch, he did have a brief moment of sanity and decided that, perhaps he should move the whole thing into a bucket instead. And maybe we shouldn't stand quite so close. So he poured the whole thing into a plastic (yes, plastic) bucket, added more liquid nitrogen to account for the increased volume, and we waited.
The force was not only enough to break the steal ball, but enough to shatter the bottom of the bucket too. He didn't have enough liquid nitrogren left to demonstrate that a rose will shatter if frozen, but we kinda saw that effect already...
> Would this be a story on here if it was, say, GE lightbulbs, instead of Oracle?
/. if, instead of being a large IT company, MS just sold lightbulbs?
Of course it would, right next to the ongoing coverage of Enron and the crisis in the Mideast...
I wonder if the MS anti-trust trial would be covered by
There really is no compromise here. If you can copy it for yourself, you can copy it for someone else. The Hollings Bill was, realistically, the only way to stop people from copying digital files. So either you destroy the $600 billion Tech industry or the $30 billion entertainment industry.
Hollings (Hollywood) realized the same thing we've all known for a long time when he (they) wrote the SSSCA: if you can program it, you can make it copy things. The only way to stop it is to make sure nothing can be touched by the consumer. It took Hollywood a while to finally understand that. SDMI showed it to them.
It's pointless to say that *I* have to accept some draconian law to save Hollywood. First, because only the most obscenely draconian law will work; and second, because it's THEIR salaries that are at risk. They need to find their new business models. Some may work, some may not.
Now, maybe no one will ever pay Mel Gibson $25 million to make films like The Patriot again. Maybe that's a shame. Maybe we'll have to resort to our local stage theatres for entertainment in the future. No one's buying Buggy Whips any more. Monks no longer have a monopoly on books, either. Entire industries do collapse.
RIP RIAA & MPAA
They've had customers arrested for comparison shopping.
Use nmh. Messages are stored in separate files rather than an entire folder in one file. You can then auto-archive by date with something like:
refile `pick +inbox -before '1 apr 2002'` -src +inbox +archive
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
-- Tom Lehrer, MLF Lullaby
Not to mention that DSL users can't cancel their main phone anyways...
Scripting for the scriptless with OWC in IE.
Reading local files with OWC in IE.
Controlling the clipboard with OWC in IE.
Multiple local files detection issues with OWC in IE.
Debian has both "powstatd" and "powstatd-crypt" packages. It's also one of the easiest UPS monitors I ever tried to set up (a nice test script can show how your cable responds to various events on the UPS, so no more guessing). The powstatd-crypt version allows a master (with the cable plugged in) to notify slaves via an encrypted channel. That is, of course, optional.
Best of all, it's Free Software.
CNET owns com.com. Stupid, yes. Hoax, no.
oops. Slashcode truncated my link to Title 17. Try this.
How is what bnetd doing OK in any way?
Perhaps you should read EFF's response, and possibly even Title 17, Chapter 12 where it says (as referenced by the EFF letter):
1201 (c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.
... (3)
1201 (f) Reverse Engineering... (3)
Actually, the only thing surprising here is that they're talking about it. Wall Street firms usually consider things like this their "competitive advantage" and don't want everyone to know what they're doing. They wouldn't mind if their competitors kept using more expensive proprietary hardware/software solutions...
> Needless to say, no one ever anticipated that particularly horrific use of airplanes...
I don't know why everyone always says this. In 1974, Samuel Byck attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon by hijacking a plane out of Dulles. His plan was to force the pilot to crash the plane into the White House.
Ok, so he was an idiot for not learning to fly the plane himself, but he had the idea. The Secret Service obviously worried about it, otherwise why would they hang out on the roof of the White House with Stinger Missiles?
The Japanese used planes as weapons with suicide-pilots during WW II.
Heck, even Tom Clancy wrote a book (Debt of Honor, MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS) that features a pilot who crashes a commercial plane into the Capitol.
Stop saying "no one ever thought about it before".
This guy is apparently unaware of that AOL already relies on OSS like AOLserver.
There are three types of people: those that can count, and those that can't.
The real problem has very little to do with software and very much to do with the people running the software.
I don't care how secure your unix system is, if your root password is "password" or you let root telnet into it, you're system is insecure. Selecting "unix" over "NT" should not save you money on insurance if it's the same moron running either machine.
Not to mention that there is some inherent risk in change. If you declare that "Unix is secure" and give a break to anyone using it, you're going to end up with a former NT administrator forced to admin a system he knows nothing about. (The same would be true in reverse.)
What's so complicated about Plucker? I'll admit that setting up your own script to scrape the web might be too complex for grandma, but you the provider can build a Plucker.pdb of your own site.
Users could then just download the plucker.prc (once) and then sync with your PDB whenever you update it. They never really have to install any of the desktop scripts at all as long as you provide them the PDBs.
If a student submits a paper that was copied illegally, the student was never the rightful owner. How can turnitin.com now claim ownership?