Indeed. The obvious ponderable here is how does most music start spreading through p2p systems anyway? A relative few people who got a copy of the album, legally or otherwise, encode the music and release it into the pool. The 99.9% (or whatever) of users that the guy says his product does not effect aren't the ones doing any illegal ripping anyway. So you're just adding an extra step into the initial "release" process, after which services like Aimster can continue to function like before. Assuming this extra step is a solvable software problem, this protection scheme will do nothing to stop p2p copying.
Look... here's what web ads come down to: if it's something like a pop-up ad that keeps moving when you try to close it, that's simply not ok. But if nothing sneaky is going on -- and it's not here, because you're just detoured through an extra page on Salon's site -- we may not like it but there's no reason to say that the company is doing something wrong. Salon started a subscription service as a way to allow people to pay for the otherwise-free content they were getting before. Obviously not enough people are contributing their fair share and more drastic measures had to be taken. If you don't like it, don't use Salon's bandwidth or read the stories that they pay people to write.
What people with this view don't seem to understand is that these restrictions will not prevent terrorism. And when you give an organization like the FBI or the NSA official approval to do something, it's very difficult to take away.
There has already been lots of discussion of deficiencies in the current intelligence and security systems within existing rules. This is similar to the conservative argument regarding gun laws -- instead of always trying to make new laws, why not really crack down on enforcement of existing ones? We can already beef up airport security, we can already do a much better job of collecting foreign intelligence, we can already give law enforcement permission to do whatever data gathering and wiretaps they need when evidence warrants... there is no excuse for infringing on the sacrosanct rights of the people until all alternatives have been exhausted.
Interesting piece about Lego trying not to bite the hand that feeds it
How is it doing that? As the article notes, users of LegOS represent a miniscule fraction of Mindstorm users. There is no mention of any attempt by LEGO to discourage any 'hacking' that has been done, only the very legitimate issue of trademark dilution. Quite frankly, the matter should be entirely resolvable by the first step LEGO is planning: the friendly letter/phone call. If it is not, it will only be due to the ego of yet another pain-in-the-ass hacker, biting the hand that feeds him -- not the other way around.
I once read about devices that courts in some state(s?) could order people convicted of DUI to have installed in their cars. It's basically a breathalyzer connected to the ignition system. Before the car will start, one must use the breathalyzer and be under a set limit for breath alcohol content. This is obviously easy to defeat as well, but if you aided a drunk in this manner and someone got injured or killed, you'd be criminally liable for what happened and would be charged along with the driver. Anyway, this sort of system seems much more American to me; only people with previous convictions must prove innocence down the road.
This is NOT a troll. Seriously, isn't this question basically asking, "shouldn't we make software that works well and is relatively easy for another programmer to take over?" The point about "beauty" is somewhat relevant, in that well-constructed code has an elegance to it that other programmers can appreciate -- in the same way the Golden Gate does for civil engineers. But then you just get down to the same old ridiculous discussion about "what is beauty?", which is nightmare anywhere but DEFINITELY shouldn't be touched on Slashdot.;-D Anyway, seems like a very silly question.
What you're worried about is nothing new; lawyers have done this using relatively (or extremely) out-of-context quotes found on paper or remembered from conversation since courts were invented.:-) Besides, both sides can use similar software, and communications that might be used to present a different perspective could be obtained just as easily.
Er... from reading other comments I've noticed that the "smart card" approach goes in two directions. American Express' "Blue" program and some others I've seen put little memory chips in the middle of their cards and call them "smart," and then there are companies who attach various services to the existing credit card number. I was obviously referring to the memory chip cards in my first comment. As for the other kind, well, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft Passport with a better existing infrastructure when it comes to uses in non-Internet situations.
As far as I can tell, these "smart cards" do nothing at all. Keep in mind that reader hardware is needed for the little embedded chips, and until such hardware becomes ubiquitous no one can do anything with any data that someone bothered to put on there. My university actually tried doing this exact thing with its student ID cards for a couple years, and the only use it could find for it was as a rechargeable stored value system. They dropped it because it wasn't all that useful and it raised the cost of the cards from like $7 to $20 to replace. I guess that these cards might be a good way to use small amounts of electronic money, but considering one is already doing just that -- it's a credit card, remember? -- I don't see the point. I guess people could store basic commonly-needed information like a health insurance policy number on them, but again, unless access technology is widely available this is just a gimmick.
Your argument is a fairly standard one against those who bitch and moan about the horrors of globalization. (I think it's basically a good argument.) This is not a typical case of globalization though, because "the wheels of progress" are not turning in the Congo. The mining is not an organized commercial operation at the lowest levels, like a factory. The reason fully organized commercial operations are beneficial is because they a) build infrastructure, and b) educate the population in at least some capacity, whether it be through pure technical skills or through low-level management. The mining does neither. In fact, it destroys the potential for future infrastructure by wrecking the environment. And people digging around in holes for buckets of mud is hardly an educating process.
This process is not an example of globalization at work. It is advanced-industrialized countries extracting resources from poorer countries and leaving little in return. Though I am not attempting to place a value judgement upon it in this comment, I must point out that arguments which attempt to defend globalization are not valid here.
The most telling point I got out of the article was the sentence where he said that in the end, a court is really going to care whether any architectural decisions seem to have been made purely to obstruct the law. I think this was the lawyer's way of pointing out that the courts enforce the spirit of the law, not just the letter. When it comes down to it, no matter how well a system attempts to satisfy the various technical legal issues involved, if it's not used for much except infringing activities the courts will try to shut it down anyway.
Of course, given nifty things like Freenet, such decisions might be essentially unenforceable, which would finally force some sort of action to move the law into the 21st century. It's a hell of a gamble though: start a revolution and hope things work out ok. To some, it definitely might seem a better idea to make the law safe for modern technology, then put it to good use.
I disagree. MP3 was successful in the first place because the quality was good enough for techies to really use it. It became mainstream through a "trickle-down" effect. Ogg Vorbis will not be adopted by techies, who are the sort of people who often care about things like sound quality, unless it gives a clear reason to switch from MP3 -- like a better quality/size ratio. Then it might become mainstream.
There is the added issue that if a format is to be used in a future massive commercial music distribution system, artists will most definitely care a great deal about the sound quality.
It's sorta obvious, but someone should say it: QUALITY MATTERS. I think that will be the most important determiner. If the quality/size tradeoff is better than MP3, people who matter will have an incentive to switch.
The other issue will probably be inclusion of a codec in a very popular player program. This will not happen if "people who matter", i.e. netheads, don't adopt. When this happens, Ogg Vorbis has a shot at hitting the mainstream.
I'd like to hear from some Canadians who are more familiar with their own political system on this one. In the US, one of the main reasons the DMCA seemed to have happened in the form it did is the ridiculous influence of corporate money over our elected officials. Do politicians in Canada face a similar environment? (It was my understanding they did not, or it at least wasn't anywhere near as bad.) If not, why would they be persuing this?
Actually, it's not a case of "false capitalism" or something. Coders -- especially the kind we're talking about here who apparently can't even work in a team -- probably just don't have the knowledge/skills required to succeed in a corporate environment. Salaries are only partially a matter of supply and demand. They are substantially determined by what an employee asks for or can get away with. As any business consultant can tell you, the only reason an employee is underpaid (meaning a smaller salary than they could be getting given the market for their skills) is because they have failed to demand fair compensation, either from their current bosses or by switching companies to one that will pay appropriately.
In the case of prima donna programmers, they're probably getting paid exactly what they're worth to the company anyway. Thanks to their inability to work within a corporate structure, their total contribution to the productivity of a programming group is probably not much greater than that of their co-workers.
No, you're probably right. The issue is one of degree (as it is in most things in life). Advertising can certainly be taken too far. And I do think (or hope) that in the end, most people's decisions will at least substantially take into account product quality. But I think you may overestimate people's attention to ads. I never knew, as your comment says, that X10's advertising is "aimed at enticing perverts to spy on women." I have NEVER given the content of one of X10's ads even a cursory examination. But I damn well know the X10 brand, and I know it has something to do with digital cameras. I would speculate that for most people, it's the same situation.
As has been mentioned in other comments to this story, iCab for Macintosh does such things. There is a top-level menu item that turns JavaScript on and off. If someone emailed the authors requesting it, one would probably be added for Java. One can certainly filter JavaScript by site... and not just whether it's on or off, but which of like seven specific things ("open new windows", "access referrer", "access history") scripts can do... for each and every site one adds to the filter. Good software does exist.
Your question is at the crux of the advertising business. What marketers have learned is that recognition is everything. If you walk up to a grocery store shelf and recognize one brand name out of four offering a comparable product, you are far more likely to buy the one you recognize. There are good reasons for this (i.e. knowing Sony equipment is reliable), and marketers simply exploit it. No matter how annoyed people get at ads, few will say "oh, I hate those damn ads, I'm going to buy this product from a company I've never heard of instead." Companies will go to great lengths to get their name in your brain, and for good reason.
Most everyone has to learn the basics of a foreign language in school. I've always just used a handful of easy-to-remember words from one of the ones I studied. No automated cracking scheme goes through foreign dictionaries too.:-)
A lot of comments have wondered about the rational for the decision. Why, if the court says there does not appear to be any bias in the decision, would they bother overturning it? I think they are doing the government a favor, because they have just removed one criteria on which Microsoft could continue to appeal down the road. When a case is this important, absolutely everything must be 100% by the book. The actions of the Court of Appeals will make sure that is so, and will make it harder for Microsoft to appeal later.
One issue I haven't seen mentioned that biologists worry about is something called "genetic diversity." If every major planting of, say, corn in the entire world was one of only a handful of genetically enhanced varieties, some individual strain of bacteria could wipe out massive portions of our food supply. That we have hundreds of different varieties of the world's major food crops gives us some measure of protection against disease and pests. Though this argument by no means says "genetic engineering is bad," it cautions us to worry about planting millions of acres of the latest higher-yield disease-resistant beautiful-flower-producing anything. The continued advances in agriculture over the centuries have already decreased the genetic diversity of our food supply (and have obviously proved a reasonable tradeoff), but genetic engineering has the potential to make the problem much worse.
I am the son of a professor of art history. At the last university where he worked, there was one member of his department who as of about 5 years ago works exclusively with computers to create his 2-D art. He certainly is not a particularly unique case. Currently, my dad runs the Department of Art & Design at Southwest Missouri State University. If you take a look at their website, you'll see that they offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts in, for example, "Image Production", or in "Computer Animation". This is a serious, well-known program at a regional university, and again it is not at all a unique case.
I think what causes most people to think of "computer graphics" as something other than fine art is that unless they are being created purely as "art" people ignore everything but their functional use. But then again, as my father would lecture at you for hours on end, "art" is hardly just stuff to look at.
I think this scenario is only possible if people are indeed interested in an obscene variety of what are, quite frankly, mindless stupid things. This is not meant to be flame-bait. But much of the information competing for attention is not "knowledge" per se; it is some form of titillation or advertisement. This "information" exists in American society because its producers know that someone, somewhere, will be interested, and that's the source of the problem. An uneducated, uninterested populace provides the fuel for this fire; technology only provides the means.
When the authors mentioned by Katz claim that this situation is to some degree inevitable, I'm not sure if they mean inevitable as a result of particular social factors that exist in the US or inevitable in general. If they meant the former they are absolutely right. In a capitalist society where citizens' true appraisal of something's importance is how much money is spent on it, look at our education budgets.
Drawing some lessons from basic economics, treating information and attention like supply and demand shows that there are two ways to reduce the current level of saturation: decrease supply or decrease demand. Supply is here to stay. But if this were to become a society where people are more interested in science and public policy and other productive areas of information the demand for drivel would fall dramatically. There's a reason the situation is far worse in the US than in other advanced-industrialized nations. Real education is the answer.
On the other hand, I think Katz' conclusion about how we eventually must begin to withdraw from the information flood is totally wrong. People are more likely to succumb rather than to fight back -- the whole article is about how the flood is molding people into conformity with its goals. This must be fought by demanding better, not by retreat.
I think this comment is dead on. I mean, Salon actually *went public*. It's a MAGAZINE, for goodness' sake. (There are certainly magazines owned by publically traded companies, but those magazines are not their entire business by any means.) In most cases, when people are getting to do something they truly love (like write), they can be satisfied with a moderate income because their life is a good one. The way I see it, that's the approach the folks running sites like Salon and Feed should have taken. Greed, as usual, turned out to be the fatal flaw.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. The obvious ponderable here is how does most music start spreading through p2p systems anyway? A relative few people who got a copy of the album, legally or otherwise, encode the music and release it into the pool. The 99.9% (or whatever) of users that the guy says his product does not effect aren't the ones doing any illegal ripping anyway. So you're just adding an extra step into the initial "release" process, after which services like Aimster can continue to function like before. Assuming this extra step is a solvable software problem, this protection scheme will do nothing to stop p2p copying.
Look... here's what web ads come down to: if it's something like a pop-up ad that keeps moving when you try to close it, that's simply not ok. But if nothing sneaky is going on -- and it's not here, because you're just detoured through an extra page on Salon's site -- we may not like it but there's no reason to say that the company is doing something wrong. Salon started a subscription service as a way to allow people to pay for the otherwise-free content they were getting before. Obviously not enough people are contributing their fair share and more drastic measures had to be taken. If you don't like it, don't use Salon's bandwidth or read the stories that they pay people to write.
What people with this view don't seem to understand is that these restrictions will not prevent terrorism. And when you give an organization like the FBI or the NSA official approval to do something, it's very difficult to take away.
There has already been lots of discussion of deficiencies in the current intelligence and security systems within existing rules. This is similar to the conservative argument regarding gun laws -- instead of always trying to make new laws, why not really crack down on enforcement of existing ones? We can already beef up airport security, we can already do a much better job of collecting foreign intelligence, we can already give law enforcement permission to do whatever data gathering and wiretaps they need when evidence warrants... there is no excuse for infringing on the sacrosanct rights of the people until all alternatives have been exhausted.
How is it doing that? As the article notes, users of LegOS represent a miniscule fraction of Mindstorm users. There is no mention of any attempt by LEGO to discourage any 'hacking' that has been done, only the very legitimate issue of trademark dilution. Quite frankly, the matter should be entirely resolvable by the first step LEGO is planning: the friendly letter/phone call. If it is not, it will only be due to the ego of yet another pain-in-the-ass hacker, biting the hand that feeds him -- not the other way around.
I once read about devices that courts in some state(s?) could order people convicted of DUI to have installed in their cars. It's basically a breathalyzer connected to the ignition system. Before the car will start, one must use the breathalyzer and be under a set limit for breath alcohol content. This is obviously easy to defeat as well, but if you aided a drunk in this manner and someone got injured or killed, you'd be criminally liable for what happened and would be charged along with the driver. Anyway, this sort of system seems much more American to me; only people with previous convictions must prove innocence down the road.
This is NOT a troll. Seriously, isn't this question basically asking, "shouldn't we make software that works well and is relatively easy for another programmer to take over?" The point about "beauty" is somewhat relevant, in that well-constructed code has an elegance to it that other programmers can appreciate -- in the same way the Golden Gate does for civil engineers. But then you just get down to the same old ridiculous discussion about "what is beauty?", which is nightmare anywhere but DEFINITELY shouldn't be touched on Slashdot. ;-D Anyway, seems like a very silly question.
What you're worried about is nothing new; lawyers have done this using relatively (or extremely) out-of-context quotes found on paper or remembered from conversation since courts were invented. :-) Besides, both sides can use similar software, and communications that might be used to present a different perspective could be obtained just as easily.
Er... from reading other comments I've noticed that the "smart card" approach goes in two directions. American Express' "Blue" program and some others I've seen put little memory chips in the middle of their cards and call them "smart," and then there are companies who attach various services to the existing credit card number. I was obviously referring to the memory chip cards in my first comment. As for the other kind, well, I'd say it's pretty much Microsoft Passport with a better existing infrastructure when it comes to uses in non-Internet situations.
As far as I can tell, these "smart cards" do nothing at all. Keep in mind that reader hardware is needed for the little embedded chips, and until such hardware becomes ubiquitous no one can do anything with any data that someone bothered to put on there. My university actually tried doing this exact thing with its student ID cards for a couple years, and the only use it could find for it was as a rechargeable stored value system. They dropped it because it wasn't all that useful and it raised the cost of the cards from like $7 to $20 to replace. I guess that these cards might be a good way to use small amounts of electronic money, but considering one is already doing just that -- it's a credit card, remember? -- I don't see the point. I guess people could store basic commonly-needed information like a health insurance policy number on them, but again, unless access technology is widely available this is just a gimmick.
This process is not an example of globalization at work. It is advanced-industrialized countries extracting resources from poorer countries and leaving little in return. Though I am not attempting to place a value judgement upon it in this comment, I must point out that arguments which attempt to defend globalization are not valid here.
Of course, given nifty things like Freenet, such decisions might be essentially unenforceable, which would finally force some sort of action to move the law into the 21st century. It's a hell of a gamble though: start a revolution and hope things work out ok. To some, it definitely might seem a better idea to make the law safe for modern technology, then put it to good use.
I disagree. MP3 was successful in the first place because the quality was good enough for techies to really use it. It became mainstream through a "trickle-down" effect. Ogg Vorbis will not be adopted by techies, who are the sort of people who often care about things like sound quality, unless it gives a clear reason to switch from MP3 -- like a better quality/size ratio. Then it might become mainstream.
There is the added issue that if a format is to be used in a future massive commercial music distribution system, artists will most definitely care a great deal about the sound quality.
It's sorta obvious, but someone should say it: QUALITY MATTERS. I think that will be the most important determiner. If the quality/size tradeoff is better than MP3, people who matter will have an incentive to switch. The other issue will probably be inclusion of a codec in a very popular player program. This will not happen if "people who matter", i.e. netheads, don't adopt. When this happens, Ogg Vorbis has a shot at hitting the mainstream.
I'd like to hear from some Canadians who are more familiar with their own political system on this one. In the US, one of the main reasons the DMCA seemed to have happened in the form it did is the ridiculous influence of corporate money over our elected officials. Do politicians in Canada face a similar environment? (It was my understanding they did not, or it at least wasn't anywhere near as bad.) If not, why would they be persuing this?
Actually, it's not a case of "false capitalism" or something. Coders -- especially the kind we're talking about here who apparently can't even work in a team -- probably just don't have the knowledge/skills required to succeed in a corporate environment. Salaries are only partially a matter of supply and demand. They are substantially determined by what an employee asks for or can get away with. As any business consultant can tell you, the only reason an employee is underpaid (meaning a smaller salary than they could be getting given the market for their skills) is because they have failed to demand fair compensation, either from their current bosses or by switching companies to one that will pay appropriately.
In the case of prima donna programmers, they're probably getting paid exactly what they're worth to the company anyway. Thanks to their inability to work within a corporate structure, their total contribution to the productivity of a programming group is probably not much greater than that of their co-workers.
No, you're probably right. The issue is one of degree (as it is in most things in life). Advertising can certainly be taken too far. And I do think (or hope) that in the end, most people's decisions will at least substantially take into account product quality. But I think you may overestimate people's attention to ads. I never knew, as your comment says, that X10's advertising is "aimed at enticing perverts to spy on women." I have NEVER given the content of one of X10's ads even a cursory examination. But I damn well know the X10 brand, and I know it has something to do with digital cameras. I would speculate that for most people, it's the same situation.
As has been mentioned in other comments to this story, iCab for Macintosh does such things. There is a top-level menu item that turns JavaScript on and off. If someone emailed the authors requesting it, one would probably be added for Java. One can certainly filter JavaScript by site... and not just whether it's on or off, but which of like seven specific things ("open new windows", "access referrer", "access history") scripts can do... for each and every site one adds to the filter. Good software does exist.
Your question is at the crux of the advertising business. What marketers have learned is that recognition is everything. If you walk up to a grocery store shelf and recognize one brand name out of four offering a comparable product, you are far more likely to buy the one you recognize. There are good reasons for this (i.e. knowing Sony equipment is reliable), and marketers simply exploit it. No matter how annoyed people get at ads, few will say "oh, I hate those damn ads, I'm going to buy this product from a company I've never heard of instead." Companies will go to great lengths to get their name in your brain, and for good reason.
Ok, forgot the little line saying I was being (or attempting to be) funny. Never mind. ;-)
Most everyone has to learn the basics of a foreign language in school. I've always just used a handful of easy-to-remember words from one of the ones I studied. No automated cracking scheme goes through foreign dictionaries too. :-)
A lot of comments have wondered about the rational for the decision. Why, if the court says there does not appear to be any bias in the decision, would they bother overturning it? I think they are doing the government a favor, because they have just removed one criteria on which Microsoft could continue to appeal down the road. When a case is this important, absolutely everything must be 100% by the book. The actions of the Court of Appeals will make sure that is so, and will make it harder for Microsoft to appeal later.
One issue I haven't seen mentioned that biologists worry about is something called "genetic diversity." If every major planting of, say, corn in the entire world was one of only a handful of genetically enhanced varieties, some individual strain of bacteria could wipe out massive portions of our food supply. That we have hundreds of different varieties of the world's major food crops gives us some measure of protection against disease and pests. Though this argument by no means says "genetic engineering is bad," it cautions us to worry about planting millions of acres of the latest higher-yield disease-resistant beautiful-flower-producing anything. The continued advances in agriculture over the centuries have already decreased the genetic diversity of our food supply (and have obviously proved a reasonable tradeoff), but genetic engineering has the potential to make the problem much worse.
I am the son of a professor of art history. At the last university where he worked, there was one member of his department who as of about 5 years ago works exclusively with computers to create his 2-D art. He certainly is not a particularly unique case. Currently, my dad runs the Department of Art & Design at Southwest Missouri State University. If you take a look at their website, you'll see that they offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts in, for example, "Image Production", or in "Computer Animation". This is a serious, well-known program at a regional university, and again it is not at all a unique case.
I think what causes most people to think of "computer graphics" as something other than fine art is that unless they are being created purely as "art" people ignore everything but their functional use. But then again, as my father would lecture at you for hours on end, "art" is hardly just stuff to look at.
I think this scenario is only possible if people are indeed interested in an obscene variety of what are, quite frankly, mindless stupid things. This is not meant to be flame-bait. But much of the information competing for attention is not "knowledge" per se; it is some form of titillation or advertisement. This "information" exists in American society because its producers know that someone, somewhere, will be interested, and that's the source of the problem. An uneducated, uninterested populace provides the fuel for this fire; technology only provides the means.
When the authors mentioned by Katz claim that this situation is to some degree inevitable, I'm not sure if they mean inevitable as a result of particular social factors that exist in the US or inevitable in general. If they meant the former they are absolutely right. In a capitalist society where citizens' true appraisal of something's importance is how much money is spent on it, look at our education budgets.
Drawing some lessons from basic economics, treating information and attention like supply and demand shows that there are two ways to reduce the current level of saturation: decrease supply or decrease demand. Supply is here to stay. But if this were to become a society where people are more interested in science and public policy and other productive areas of information the demand for drivel would fall dramatically. There's a reason the situation is far worse in the US than in other advanced-industrialized nations. Real education is the answer.
On the other hand, I think Katz' conclusion about how we eventually must begin to withdraw from the information flood is totally wrong. People are more likely to succumb rather than to fight back -- the whole article is about how the flood is molding people into conformity with its goals. This must be fought by demanding better, not by retreat.
I think this comment is dead on. I mean, Salon actually *went public*. It's a MAGAZINE, for goodness' sake. (There are certainly magazines owned by publically traded companies, but those magazines are not their entire business by any means.) In most cases, when people are getting to do something they truly love (like write), they can be satisfied with a moderate income because their life is a good one. The way I see it, that's the approach the folks running sites like Salon and Feed should have taken. Greed, as usual, turned out to be the fatal flaw.