I loved this article! Of course, I was at CodeCon, at the Google reception, and I stuffed my face at Sparky's. Would anyone like some origami paper (or foil?), I always have some with me...
In case anyone is wondering, CodeCon is what Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame) started after getting tired of conferences where you pay a ridiculous fee to hear some marketeer ramble on about some vaporware that won't ever see the light of day. CodeCon is a conference for hackers to show off their projects; the presentation must be made by a developer and you must demo some working code. It was also less than $100 for three days of presentations.
I think making counterfit CD's or CHARGING for some one elses work IS piracy, but I really am not sure file sharing for free is...
I won't disagree with you but Congress already has. The DMCA, of all laws, changed the definition of "commercial gain" to include "the receipt, or expectation of receipt" of copyrighted material. In other words, Congress specifically made mere trading illegal. People running P2P clients are making infringing material available because they expect to download other infringing material.
The problem is that once these copy protection controls are installed everyone will want to use them. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University has discovered one of the patterns used for detection of bank notes, known as the EURion Constellation. Sure, it's not that big of a deal when only bank notes have the constellation, but expect to see the constellation start showing up in the darndest places.
Soon everyone and their brother will start printing the Constellation onto whatever they feel needs "copy protection." You'll see it printed on photographs and forms and all kinds of junk. Regular people will have their right to make copies and the ability to use their own equipment usurped by others abusing a mechanism that was only supposed to inconvenience counterfeiters.
In regular Python, every thread has it's own C stack and every Python function/method call generates a new C stack frame. This creates a resource problem if you have a lot of threads. Stackless does it's own threading/scheduling and has it's own compact structures for maintaining thread states. Stackless lets you use many, many threads efficiently.
I love Etymotic Research, they make great products. However, I will say that the $20 one-size-fits-all ER-25 attenuators aren't very good. They sound bad, though somewhat less bad than drug store plugs. Further, unless you're standing right in front of a speaker stack you don't need -25dB of attenuation, -15dB is much more reasonable.
The custom made attenuators they make with interchangeable filters (ER-15, ER-9, etc...) are MUCH better. The attenuation is much flatter and custom impressions are vastly more comfortable (pop em in and forget them, no fiddling) Definitely worth the extra money.
I'll back up the other responders and say that the Etymotic canalphones are absolutely unbelievable and well worth the $300. More isolation than any other headphone available, with sound as good as the best dynamic headphones, AND they coil up and fit in your breast pocket.
For portable use or stationary use in a noisy environment, nothing else even comes close.
I visited Neumann in Berlin and they used a Commodore PET and some ancient software to measure the frequency response of microphones in their anechoic chamber. This was several years ago but I believe they still use it.
They also used a 40+ year old measurement microphone to calibrate it.
If you want good sound, you want to get some professional "nearfield monitors." These are designed to be used with computers and sound excellent. Go to your local pro audio store, they will have many models ranging from a few hundred bucks for passive ones to many thousands of dollars for very powerful ones with active crossovers. Good brands include Genelec, Tannoy, Hafler, and even Mackie.
It is very highly recommended that you get ones with digital inputs or get a seperate digital>analog converter. At that point the weakness will be your room. You can build "Helmholtz Resistors" (boxes with a specific volume of confined air) to absorb bass frequencies centered around your major room mode.
Uh yeah, that was thought of a few thousand years ago. Known as "Direct Search Factorization" it is basically brute force and the slowest algorithm. There are much faster algorithms available and they have been used on the RSA factoring challenges.
Ole Roemer measured the speed of light back in 1676 by measuring the time difference between predicted and observed eclipses of Io by Jupiter. It's amazing that Jupiter was once again utilized to provide the first measurement of the speed of gravity.
Many people are suggesting that a primary reason why ESR's work was rejected is because it required Python to build the kernel. Well, I would like to interject that a new build system is still desperately needed. I built a kernel the other day and had to install all sorts of extra crap to do so. Can we please have a configuration system that doesn't depend on outside tools? I do not want to have to install gcc, gmake, libc, etc... just to build a new kernel!
Maybe if Mac hardware weren't so over priced people wouldn't bitch so much. It's not like people are buying this software to run on hardware Apple never sees a dime from the sale of. Apple gets you coming and going; when you buy the hardware and later when you upgrade the OS.
It's not like Apple supports their hardware for very long anyways. OSX doesn't even support hardware made less than two years before it came out (Lombard DVD player, for instance)! Add to that the serious design flaws that Apple refuses to take responsibility for (G3 powerbook hinges, power connectors with inadequate strain relief, all sorts of cracking and other plastic problems) and it adds up to a lot of pain when shelling out for OS upgrades.
Still, it's the best operating system you can buy and that's certainly worth something.
Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show.
We hear this again and again. The vast majority of artists never see a dime from their "royalties." Artists say they don't want to be reduced to playing on the street because they can't sell albums from the comfort of their homes, but that is pretty much the way it is and has always been.
burris "I wanted a profession that didn't require my physical presence." - Kinky Friedman, commenting on his decision to become a novelist.
You are correct but unfortunately the statute was amended by the DMCA. Now the definition of "financial gain" includes the "receipt or expectation of receipt of copyrighted works." In other words, they amended the law to forbid "trading." It's going to be difficult to assert that you setup a file-sharing client with no intent to download anything else (assuming file sharing on computers is even protected by AHRA, which it probably isn't.)
Back in the '70s and early '80s, the Williams company of Tulsa Oklahoma started laying fiber in their oil and gas pipelines. It made perfect sense since they had the right of way. Thus, the Wiltel network was born (later to be absorbed into Worldcom.)
Take things back three decades or so, when the Dead toured the country, bopping from city to city as a corps of hardy fans followed them around, taping their music and swapping the cassettes among other die-hard fans.
At first, the band didn't like it. They cracked down on fans, admonishing them that anyone caught recording live shows would be booted out.
"We assumed they were stealing our intellectual property," says Dead lyricist and road manager John Perry Barlow. But then the musicians shrugged, figuring they weren't in it for the money, Barlow says. (Which was convenient, considering that they weren't making much cash.)
"We figured it's bad for your karma to be mean to a Deadhead," Barlow says.
You can charge as much as you want for GPL software no matter where you got it from. However, if someone you sold a binary-only copy to comes asking for the source code then you have to make it available to them for a reasonable cost of media and distrobution only. You can't sell GPL software for $19.95 and then say source will cost an additional million dollars (effectively making the software closed source.)
The clincher is you can't stop someone you sold a copy to from giving it away for no cost.
There are now a number of radio controlled watches on the market. They may not be accurate to eight seconds in six months but every night they tune into WWVB (in the USA, there are european models as well) and set themselves to UTC. If your reception is good they stay within one second of UTC.
Many artists have taken a cue from what was formely the top grossing band in the music industry: the Grateful Dead. These bands allow the free noncommercial trading of concert recordings. Etree, for instance, is a community who trades this music in a losslessly compressed format.
It's not just hippie music, either. Metallica (ironically,) Pearl Jam, and Radiohead are a few bands whos live music is freely tradeable. A very incomplete list of bands who allow recorders at their concerts and subsequent trading can be found Here
The job keeps him on a regular schedule, which he deadpans is "better than waking up and picking the lint out of my belly button."
What employers really want: someone who will work like a dog without constant supervision.
I have ten years of OO design and development experience, but I don't have a degree. As you can expect, I've been out of work for a while and couldn't seem to get anyone to even call me back. One company did call me back. After the preliminary interview I had a second one with the CTO and DirEng. When they asked me what I had been doing I didn't have to say "Sitting around on my ass, mostly." Instead I pulled out my latest project, a little portable device built out of off-the-shelf embedded computer components and held together with some C++ and Python I wrote (not unlike the popular car MP3 player projects.)
Guess what? I got a job doing embedded development work at my old salary despite not having any real embedded experience at all! In part because I was able to demonstrate that I am resourceful, creative, and hard-working, even when nobody is holding a carrot/whip over me. That is what employers want.
So write some software, build some hardware, do something, anything, to differentiate yourself from the hordes of people who have been catching up on playstation between jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
I loved this article! Of course, I was at CodeCon, at the Google reception, and I stuffed my face at Sparky's. Would anyone like some origami paper (or foil?), I always have some with me...
In case anyone is wondering, CodeCon is what Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame) started after getting tired of conferences where you pay a ridiculous fee to hear some marketeer ramble on about some vaporware that won't ever see the light of day. CodeCon is a conference for hackers to show off their projects; the presentation must be made by a developer and you must demo some working code. It was also less than $100 for three days of presentations.
burris
There is no such thing as a "fair use product." Fair Use is the term for the exception to the exclusive rights of Copyright holders.
burris
Have fun "working" with your "non-toy" language. Personally, I'll stick to writing useful programs by "playing" with my "toys."
burris
I think making counterfit CD's or CHARGING for some one elses work IS piracy, but I really am not sure file sharing for free is...
I won't disagree with you but Congress already has. The DMCA, of all laws, changed the definition of "commercial gain" to include "the receipt, or expectation of receipt" of copyrighted material. In other words, Congress specifically made mere trading illegal. People running P2P clients are making infringing material available because they expect to download other infringing material.
burris
The problem is that once these copy protection controls are installed everyone will want to use them. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University has discovered one of the patterns used for detection of bank notes, known as the EURion Constellation. Sure, it's not that big of a deal when only bank notes have the constellation, but expect to see the constellation start showing up in the darndest places.
Soon everyone and their brother will start printing the Constellation onto whatever they feel needs "copy protection." You'll see it printed on photographs and forms and all kinds of junk. Regular people will have their right to make copies and the ability to use their own equipment usurped by others abusing a mechanism that was only supposed to inconvenience counterfeiters.
In regular Python, every thread has it's own C stack and every Python function/method call generates a new C stack frame. This creates a resource problem if you have a lot of threads. Stackless does it's own threading/scheduling and has it's own compact structures for maintaining thread states. Stackless lets you use many, many threads efficiently.
burris
I love Etymotic Research, they make great products. However, I will say that the $20 one-size-fits-all ER-25 attenuators aren't very good. They sound bad, though somewhat less bad than drug store plugs. Further, unless you're standing right in front of a speaker stack you don't need -25dB of attenuation, -15dB is much more reasonable.
The custom made attenuators they make with interchangeable filters (ER-15, ER-9, etc...) are MUCH better. The attenuation is much flatter and custom impressions are vastly more comfortable (pop em in and forget them, no fiddling) Definitely worth the extra money.
burris
I'll back up the other responders and say that the Etymotic canalphones are absolutely unbelievable and well worth the $300. More isolation than any other headphone available, with sound as good as the best dynamic headphones, AND they coil up and fit in your breast pocket.
For portable use or stationary use in a noisy environment, nothing else even comes close.
burris
They also used a 40+ year old measurement microphone to calibrate it.
burris
If you want good sound, you want to get some professional "nearfield monitors." These are designed to be used with computers and sound excellent. Go to your local pro audio store, they will have many models ranging from a few hundred bucks for passive ones to many thousands of dollars for very powerful ones with active crossovers. Good brands include Genelec, Tannoy, Hafler, and even Mackie.
It is very highly recommended that you get ones with digital inputs or get a seperate digital>analog converter. At that point the weakness will be your room. You can build "Helmholtz Resistors" (boxes with a specific volume of confined air) to absorb bass frequencies centered around your major room mode.
burris
Don't forget to have your pgp key ready when registering for CodeCon. Then you can participate in the key signing.
burris
A page on factoring algorithms
burris
http://www.what-is-the-speed-of-light.com/roemer-s peed-of-light.html
burris
Many people are suggesting that a primary reason why ESR's work was rejected is because it required Python to build the kernel. Well, I would like to interject that a new build system is still desperately needed. I built a kernel the other day and had to install all sorts of extra crap to do so. Can we please have a configuration system that doesn't depend on outside tools? I do not want to have to install gcc, gmake, libc, etc... just to build a new kernel!
burris
Maybe if Mac hardware weren't so over priced people wouldn't bitch so much. It's not like people are buying this software to run on hardware Apple never sees a dime from the sale of. Apple gets you coming and going; when you buy the hardware and later when you upgrade the OS.
It's not like Apple supports their hardware for very long anyways. OSX doesn't even support hardware made less than two years before it came out (Lombard DVD player, for instance)! Add to that the serious design flaws that Apple refuses to take responsibility for (G3 powerbook hinges, power connectors with inadequate strain relief, all sorts of cracking and other plastic problems) and it adds up to a lot of pain when shelling out for OS upgrades.
Still, it's the best operating system you can buy and that's certainly worth something.
burris
burris
"I wanted a profession that didn't require my physical presence." - Kinky Friedman, commenting on his decision to become a novelist.
You are correct but unfortunately the statute was amended by the DMCA. Now the definition of "financial gain" includes the "receipt or expectation of receipt of copyrighted works." In other words, they amended the law to forbid "trading." It's going to be difficult to assert that you setup a file-sharing client with no intent to download anything else (assuming file sharing on computers is even protected by AHRA, which it probably isn't.)
Burris
Back in the '70s and early '80s, the Williams company of Tulsa Oklahoma started laying fiber in their oil and gas pipelines. It made perfect sense since they had the right of way. Thus, the Wiltel network was born (later to be absorbed into Worldcom.)
burris
http://bittorrent.theory.org:8080/20020528_eff_tin seltown_club.mp3
burris
Taken from a washington post article archived on rapstation.
The dead's popularity didn't really start spiralling out of control until they released an MTV video in '88 surprisingly enough.
burris
You can charge as much as you want for GPL software no matter where you got it from. However, if someone you sold a binary-only copy to comes asking for the source code then you have to make it available to them for a reasonable cost of media and distrobution only. You can't sell GPL software for $19.95 and then say source will cost an additional million dollars (effectively making the software closed source.)
The clincher is you can't stop someone you sold a copy to from giving it away for no cost.
burris
Each GPS satellite has two cesium and two rubidium atomic clocks on board. Belt, meet Suspenders. Suspenders, meet Belt.
burris
There are now a number of radio controlled watches on the market. They may not be accurate to eight seconds in six months but every night they tune into WWVB (in the USA, there are european models as well) and set themselves to UTC. If your reception is good they stay within one second of UTC.
burris
(chime head)
It's not just hippie music, either. Metallica (ironically,) Pearl Jam, and Radiohead are a few bands whos live music is freely tradeable. A very incomplete list of bands who allow recorders at their concerts and subsequent trading can be found Here
burris
I have ten years of OO design and development experience, but I don't have a degree. As you can expect, I've been out of work for a while and couldn't seem to get anyone to even call me back. One company did call me back. After the preliminary interview I had a second one with the CTO and DirEng. When they asked me what I had been doing I didn't have to say "Sitting around on my ass, mostly." Instead I pulled out my latest project, a little portable device built out of off-the-shelf embedded computer components and held together with some C++ and Python I wrote (not unlike the popular car MP3 player projects.)
Guess what? I got a job doing embedded development work at my old salary despite not having any real embedded experience at all! In part because I was able to demonstrate that I am resourceful, creative, and hard-working, even when nobody is holding a carrot/whip over me. That is what employers want.
So write some software, build some hardware, do something, anything, to differentiate yourself from the hordes of people who have been catching up on playstation between jobs.
burris