From a purely techinal stand point, not getting into the legal or moral debates here, but just the techinally details.
A lot of colleges (and ISP, and companies) bandwidth is being quickly chewed up by Napaster, why the hell doesn't the colleges just start an in house mp3 server? It would save a lot going though internal 100mb ethernet instead of a extrenal T1. If I could go to college, I would slap in a couple 30 gig IDE hard drives and post it to the local college mail list.
One of my prof (in Intro to CS) made ALL correct answers on a multichoice test 'A'. If you wanted to check a prefect grade all you had to do was mark 'A' on every question.
Over %80 of the class failed. In that class on that test before, it was around %5-10 that failed, here it was over %80 that failed, kinda funny.
It was extremely cruel though. Make you math test all come out to the answer '42' and see what happens.
Or have the final test that is %100 of the students grade
Given a phrase of boolean variables, determine if any combination of values for variables makes the phrase true (Satisfiability)
Given a set of numbers, and a target sum, determine if any combination of the numbers add up to the target sum (Subset-sum problem)
Please excuse my ignorance on this, but this both seems easy if you can use really fsck bloated and slow moving code. I assume this won't be consider polynomial time? Could anyone explain what exact is 'polynomial time' is? How it is defined?
Both Quake and Quake2 had pentagrams in them. Are pentagrams satanic or witcha? Also goats heads and gothic looking stuff. If a pentagram is a satanic symbol, but Quake and Quake2 had satanic symbols in them. It won't really surpise me if Quake3 had some to (haven't played it yet).
On the other side though, I do remember crosses, which are a christain (and jewish??) symbols.
You know my freind, you should eat so much acid when reading slashdot, also sleeping once a week might also do you some good.
Let me ask you this.
You know in Central Park (New York, NY) in the winter time when the pond freezes over, where do the ducks go, do they fly away by themselves or does someone come and take them away, to maybe a zoo or something for the winter?
Lets think about this, this (Quake 3) is the creatation of ID Software, a third party company that has no ties to the United States Goverment, other than them (ID Software) pays their taxes every year, that is the only ties they have. So why would ID Software want to brain wash our kids for the United States Goverment?
Second, if the goverment really wanted "Super killers" why the hell couldn't the CIA go down to the local Mental Ward, take a few psycho path and serail killers, people already desenative to death and killing and start training them in miltary combat?
You know how much the United States Goverment would have to spend to do a full fledge "brain wash" campain on all the youth of this country? That would be tons of taxes dollars WASTED down the drain.................. ok so you may have a point.
What would be cool if CmdrTaco and them released the blue prints to the slash compound, that would be a cool little death match.
That or the CIA national headquaters, running around fragging people in there, but uh then again it probably isn't the easiest place to get blue prints for. And if you do have blue prints for the CIA national headquaters you would probably suddenly "disappear" if you posted them on slashdot.
The white house, now that would be cool, fragging people in the lincoln room.
I used to make maps in Quake 1 of my house, school and place of work, but I had a couple people freak on me when I released the map to my school, they said it was unhealthy.
Applicatons: truthfully I would rather have vi then quicken or rather have vi then notepad, word, Word95, any MacOS or Windows Editor.
Why do I choose `vi`, well because I am a system admin and wanta be programmer and could give a shit about `easy to use` and want `effective to use`, I don't want to trip over any dam pull down means or stroke my mouse off to save a dam file, I want it raw.
But then again, I am a system admin and wantabe programmer, I want a Unix or Unix-like system to work with, not some glossy peice of shit as my server. I want to be able to sleep 5 hours staight without getting a call saying "You know that iMac with MacOS 9 you are using for your web server/ ftp/ radius and email server for 50,000 users? Yea, surpise it went down again, please fix it again"
But then again I have differant requirements in OS then other people, surpise NOT EVERYONE in the world wants the exact same thing. Sure Macs and great, for GrandParents, but they totally suck as server, as Linux totally sucks as a "point-click-drool" type of system.
I wonder if CNET is doing an article next week "Apples VS Oranges, the DEATHMATCH, which really is the BEST fruit"
Dam atleast the Gnome Vs KDE or BSD Vs Linux or vi Vs Emacs had some dam content, atleast they where comparing to things that it made sense to.
CNET next week, which is the BEST FOOD, find out in our next DEATHMATCH: Ford Vans Vs Empty Soda cans.
damit the commerical world gets all the cool tools, the sound blaster live drivers where out first on Windows, and most of the new 3D cards are supported under windows, not to menation the cool automatic shutdown "blue screen of death" that is smart enough to turn it's self of and now this.
Dammit, I would like porn on my desktop, please please tell me this works under wine...
From my own humble experinces I have yet to meet a person in real life that doesn't use napaster illegal, I am aware that there are some users that use it for legal purposes, but personally, in the real world, I have yet to meet a one of them. From my own sheltered experinces, that is where I drawed the 0.00002 %, I was trying to convay a small user base of legal users, I am probably wrong.
Sorry for any pain or inconvience this may have caused slash dot.
Do it the Unix way, do one thing and do it well. If you want to be a kernel hacker, become the best kernel hackers (atleast that is what the ulimate goal should be), if you want to be a encryption expert, be the best encryption expert, if you want to be a guy that pours hot grits in his pants, make sure there is more grits than anyone else and make sure they are 10 times as hot as any other grits on the planet.
I am not saying to isolated you self on one topic, but focus on one topic even when you are playing with another. It is good to have a broad understand and experince with a lot of differant aspects of computer science, but always keep focus and dedicated to atleast your favorite topic and if you have to play or slack off, do it on one of the lesser subjects.
When people say 'LINUZ' most people think 'KERNEL HACKER EXTREME' when people say '[insert your name here]' what do you want people to think first '[insert favorite type of hacking here]'
Find what you want to do, do that, focus on that, eat sleep and breath on that, play, slack, tweak on everything else, but keep focused on your main goal, don't slip, and if you do slip get the hell back up fast.
If you are just starting though, it is a differant story. If you are starting, spread way the hell out, try everything at first and see what 1) you really enjoy 2) what you really take to.
Every try graphics programming or Javascript, tried BASIC yet or VMS, pick up a x86 ASM book and a NetBSD CD, every looked at Windows98 or DirectX programming? Try some Visual C++ and then some gcc, GTK/QT/Motif/Leffif, super powered killer robot programming? Try everything at first, find out what give you that RUSH that you can feel, then when you know what you want to do, focus in on that and dedicate most of your time to that.
The only real advice I can give though is don't ever get bored or burnt out, it will kill you. Scap that, on second thought the best advice I can give is that really hot grits in the pants isn't as fun as it may sound, ouch.. It is all fun and games till someone loses a tes^H^H^H^ eye
I would like to inform you that they are now watching you. Think about it.
By the way, please turn around, there is a gun barrel at the back of you...
Only if you where a little quicker boy, what a shame, and a smart one to.
For everyone reading slashdot, all of GreyFox's posts from now on are really from CIA agents.
Which is somewhat cool, because Agents rack up a lot of karma, but on the down side Agents have a stuble way of brainwashing you though their period and question mark placements.
The Whitehouse, on behalf of the United States Goverment would like to clear up a few rumors that have been causing an uproar with the citizens of this Great Country.
There was been some acusations and rumors going around that the White House and the United States Goverment are not fully happy with the state of the union. To clear this up, and to fully put out or offical statement on this, on behalf of the United States Goverment we would like to state for the record "We are really fucking pissed".
I know this may come to a surpise to most of the citizens of this Great Country, but ever since the CIA and rosewell conscripies, the Goverment and the White House of this Great Nation of ours, have not really been getting any, and this makes us really pissed off. We (the United States Goverment) watch our citizens going day in and day out getting laid by great looking women, and on behalf of the United States goverment I would like to say "Where is my booty, why don't I get any hoes?" and also like to add "And the United States Goverment is pissed about this"
Thank you for taking the time to read this press release and hope this clears up any details the American public might not be aware about.
Yes Metallica should go after the users trading the mp3 files, not after napaster. The users are commiting the crime, not Napaster.
Think about it, go into a head shop, buy a bong then go smoke some weed out of it. When Mr. Police Man sees you smoking pot, who is he going to arrest, you or the head shop.
What law did the head shop break? None. What law did Napaster break? None.
Did you break a law when you started smoking pot? Yes (At least under the current laws in the United States). Did you break a law when you started trading copyrighted mp3's? Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
Did usenet or [insert isp here] break any laws when they made there newsgroups public? No. Did you break any laws when you posted copyrighted porn to these news groups. Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
So who is responiable you or the head shop? Who broke the law, you or the head shop? Who should get fined or put in jail, you or the head shop?
Napaster *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the company claims, as bongs and newsgroups *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the companies claim.
You can used Napaster to trade legal mp3's (like self-written, self-produced material) as you can use both bongs (for smoking tobacco) and newsgroups (for posting self-produced material). All which are pretty legal.
Does anyone use these things for legal purposes though? No not really, maybe 0.00002 % of the entire population.
Please take responiablity for your actions, even if sometimes you actions are illegal and may laid you in jail.
This is really good IMHO. Not that people are stealing porn, or penthouse is showing off it's huge uh legal team, but they are doing it the right way.
See, they go after the poster, the one that commited the crime, slap him with a small fine and embrass the hell out of him so he doesn't do it again, penthouse gets from cash from it and everyone is happy.
If penthouse decided to go after the news group or hosting provided, this would be a bad thing almost as stupid as if Metallica went after Napaster instead of the users.
Metallica could learn a lot about the way penthouse is handling this. Like I said a million times before, dam Metallica really needs to get some porn and just fsck chill out.
There is two points to be made here, what is legal and what is moral?
Under the (USA) law now, even if you disagree with the laws, even if the laws are completely wrong, it is still the law. What the copyright laws say for *most* Music CDs is that you can not redistrubate any content of the CD without permission. The RIAA, Metallica or anyone that has the right to give permission to redistrubate CD content, did not give anyone permission to post them to a large user base (whatever that user base may be, in this case napaster) in any form.
Legally, the RIAA is right. Under the law it, they own the content that is being posted, and it is being posted without there permission.
This (most "commerical" mp3s) being posted are copyrighted, and who ever owns the copyright can basically do what ever the fuck they want to within the copyright.
Hell Cowboy Neil could sell his music on 8 track tapes and have a copy right "you can only listen to this music under Sony 8 Track tape players and the owner of the 8 track is the ONLY one that can listen to the music, you can't even listen to the music when or where someone else can hear it", sure it is stupid, about as dumb as most copyrights on CDs now, but that is Cowboy Neil's right, just like the right the RIAA or who ever can impose any copyright on their "IP" as they want, as long as it doesn't void any other copyrights or break a law... well pretty much you get the idea.
Legally the RIAA has a strong case, but not against Napster. Listen, if you buy 2 VCRs and use them to bootleg porn, can the porno industry sue sony for "helping" prevents bootleg porn? Hell no. You can walk up to any head shop and buy a one hitter or bong, I mean err uh some smoking device or tobaccoo pipe. These bong as sold as tobaco smoking devices, pretty legal in USA, but who the hell using them for smoking tobaccoo? No one, everyone smokes pot or crack out of them, but they (the head shop) still can sell them, because they aren't implying you use them for illegal purposes (pot and crack are illegal in the US)
The Head shop says "Hey man, these are for uh wooow did you see that, *cough, cough* oh head rush, what where we just talking about? oh yea, these devices are not for illegal purposes, you can only smoke legal substances out of them man, like toboccoo or something. If you get busted it is your own fault dumb ass, you got a lighter?"
The same way napser say "Hey man, do not trade illegal or copyrighted files over this services man or we will ban you ass. Oh you are one of the people that got banned for illegal meticalla mp3s? screw off, this is only for legal purposes only"
I seriously doubt anyone can sue napster over copyright, hell if you can sue any service for having mp3s on it, I could sue AOL, newsgroups, irc servers, web sites, ftp operators and about anything on the Internet. Hell I could uuencode a bunch of mp3's and post them to slashdot or wet_and_greasy_used_porn.com.
If they can sue napaster they could sue about any service on the Internet, and by putting all services on the Internet out of business, guess what NO MORE INTERNET. I doubt this will happen, cause it would really piss of Al Gore (since he created and invented the Intenet with his bare hands), and Al can kick some ass when it comes down to it...
I think the RIAA can and has the right to sue the users that where posting or sharing these files on Napaster, will they? I don't know, but they own the copyright, and if they want to, they could.
Point being, right or not, copyrights exists. Right or not, people that own the copyrights can pretty much get anyway with any dam thing they please under they copyright with their "IP"
So we (open source zealots and slashdot trolls) can do a couple things here. We could continue to break the law, even if it is a stupid law. Find a way to change the laws. Work closly with the RIAA to find a "middle ground" that everyone is somewhat happy with. Troll. Only support artists that release their "IP" under freindly copyrights (check mp3.com). Bitch about it or go view some porn...
I don't know about you, but I am dam hungry, haven't eaten all day, I am going to grab some dinner, what where we talking about?
Re:Obligatory reference to Linux
on
New Mega Alphas
·
· Score: 2
The square root of everything, all news posted to slashdot is Linux VS Microsoft, please read the FAQ.
Was NT supose to be Microsoft's cross-platform portable OS? I have seen stuff rolling around in old comp.sgi.* posts with people having problems getting NT on their MIPS proc... I know it isn't alpha, but the point being, wasn't one of NT goals to run on every proc know to man?
Maybe it was either a dream or an lsd trip... Mmmm roasted white rabbit never tasted so good.
It has been slow since the maintainer of the project (Tim Leary) passed away a few years ago... I seen one running at a comdex a few years ago, the machine keep getting a "God Complex" whenever the self-awareness patch was loaded into kernel space.... The machine had a huge ego and starting sending tcp/ip packets to Solaris machine, reportly the packets contained things like "So, check me out, Linux stud, that's right, you want to get with this baby" and "Check out my uptime chic, my uptime is huge, and that isn't the only thing huge, my other huge thing has a high uptime to, want to get with this baby?"
Microsoft did intergrate a self-awareness patch into Windows98, but everytime they installed it, it was slow, sluggish and crashed a lot. Most thought it was just windows being windows, but some experts believe that the machine was depressed and tried to commit sucide once it was aware of it's true nature...
Microsoft advised users to install the "heavy drinking" patch, to "easy the pain" of the Windows self-awareness patch.
Uh, correct me if I am wrong, but didn't VMS die a long time ago? I remember going to it's funeral, the only thing I can conclude from this, is that Compaq == Jesus Christ if they can raise the dead like him...
Seriously, is VMS still alive and kicking? Does it have any user base, commerical support (besides compaq) or community behind it?
Differance between OpenVMS and VMS? Is OpenVMS *really* Open, or Open for marketing reasons?
Sorry, when it comes to VMS I am an idiot, it was before my time
Agent Weston: As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Malda. It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Rob A. Malda, program writer for a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias CmdrTaco and are guilty of virtually every computer [copyright] crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Malda. You're here because we need your help. We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself Anonymous Coward. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.
CmdrTaco: Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call.
Agent Weston: Um, Mr. Malda. You disappoint me.
CmdrTaco: You can't scare me with this Kerbose crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call.
Agent Weston: Tell me, Mr. Malda, what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak.... You're going to help us, Mr. Malda whether you want to or not.
Slashdot Mirror
please mod the above post up
Or even better yet, just read the postings on
That has caused more troubles in this society then Napaster, Volient Video games, and guns combined.
From a purely techinal stand point, not getting into the legal or moral debates here, but just the techinally details.
A lot of colleges (and ISP, and companies) bandwidth is being quickly chewed up by Napaster, why the hell doesn't the colleges just start an in house mp3 server? It would save a lot going though internal 100mb ethernet instead of a extrenal T1. If I could go to college, I would slap in a couple 30 gig IDE hard drives and post it to the local college mail list.
God college sounds like so much fun.
One of my prof (in Intro to CS) made ALL correct answers on a multichoice test 'A'. If you wanted to check a prefect grade all you had to do was mark 'A' on every question.
Over %80 of the class failed. In that class on that test before, it was around %5-10 that failed, here it was over %80 that failed, kinda funny.
It was extremely cruel though. Make you math test all come out to the answer '42' and see what happens.
Or have the final test that is %100 of the students grade
True or False:
___ P = NP
Given a phrase of boolean variables, determine if any combination of values for variables makes the phrase true (Satisfiability)
Given a set of numbers, and a target sum, determine if any combination of the numbers add up to the target sum (Subset-sum problem)
Please excuse my ignorance on this, but this both seems easy if you can use really fsck bloated and slow moving code. I assume this won't be consider polynomial time? Could anyone explain what exact is 'polynomial time' is? How it is defined?
Both Quake and Quake2 had pentagrams in them. Are pentagrams satanic or witcha? Also goats heads and gothic looking stuff. If a pentagram is a satanic symbol, but Quake and Quake2 had satanic symbols in them. It won't really surpise me if Quake3 had some to (haven't played it yet).
On the other side though, I do remember crosses, which are a christain (and jewish??) symbols.
You know my freind, you should eat so much acid when reading slashdot, also sleeping once a week might also do you some good.
Let me ask you this.
You know in Central Park (New York, NY) in the winter time when the pond freezes over, where do the ducks go, do they fly away by themselves or does someone come and take them away, to maybe a zoo or something for the winter?
Lets think about this, this (Quake 3) is the creatation of ID Software, a third party company that has no ties to the United States Goverment, other than them (ID Software) pays their taxes every year, that is the only ties they have. So why would ID Software want to brain wash our kids for the United States Goverment?
Second, if the goverment really wanted "Super killers" why the hell couldn't the CIA go down to the local Mental Ward, take a few psycho path and serail killers, people already desenative to death and killing and start training them in miltary combat?
You know how much the United States Goverment would have to spend to do a full fledge "brain wash" campain on all the youth of this country? That would be tons of taxes dollars WASTED down the drain
What would be cool if CmdrTaco and them released the blue prints to the slash compound, that would be a cool little death match.
That or the CIA national headquaters, running around fragging people in there, but uh then again it probably isn't the easiest place to get blue prints for. And if you do have blue prints for the CIA national headquaters you would probably suddenly "disappear" if you posted them on slashdot.
The white house, now that would be cool, fragging people in the lincoln room.
I used to make maps in Quake 1 of my house, school and place of work, but I had a couple people freak on me when I released the map to my school, they said it was unhealthy.
Applicatons: truthfully I would rather have vi then quicken or rather have vi then notepad, word, Word95, any MacOS or Windows Editor.
Why do I choose `vi`, well because I am a system admin and wanta be programmer and could give a shit about `easy to use` and want `effective to use`, I don't want to trip over any dam pull down means or stroke my mouse off to save a dam file, I want it raw.
But then again, I am a system admin and wantabe programmer, I want a Unix or Unix-like system to work with, not some glossy peice of shit as my server. I want to be able to sleep 5 hours staight without getting a call saying "You know that iMac with MacOS 9 you are using for your web server/ ftp/ radius and email server for 50,000 users? Yea, surpise it went down again, please fix it again"
But then again I have differant requirements in OS then other people, surpise NOT EVERYONE in the world wants the exact same thing. Sure Macs and great, for GrandParents, but they totally suck as server, as Linux totally sucks as a "point-click-drool" type of system.
I wonder if CNET is doing an article next week "Apples VS Oranges, the DEATHMATCH, which really is the BEST fruit"
Dam atleast the Gnome Vs KDE or BSD Vs Linux or vi Vs Emacs had some dam content, atleast they where comparing to things that it made sense to.
CNET next week, which is the BEST FOOD, find out in our next DEATHMATCH: Ford Vans Vs Empty Soda cans.
damit the commerical world gets all the cool tools, the sound blaster live drivers where out first on Windows, and most of the new 3D cards are supported under windows, not to menation the cool automatic shutdown "blue screen of death" that is smart enough to turn it's self of and now this.
Dammit, I would like porn on my desktop, please please tell me this works under wine...
From my own humble experinces I have yet to meet a person in real life that doesn't use napaster illegal, I am aware that there are some users that use it for legal purposes, but personally, in the real world, I have yet to meet a one of them. From my own sheltered experinces, that is where I drawed the 0.00002 %, I was trying to convay a small user base of legal users, I am probably wrong.
Sorry for any pain or inconvience this may have caused slash dot.
Do it the Unix way, do one thing and do it well. If you want to be a kernel hacker, become the best kernel hackers (atleast that is what the ulimate goal should be), if you want to be a encryption expert, be the best encryption expert, if you want to be a guy that pours hot grits in his pants, make sure there is more grits than anyone else and make sure they are 10 times as hot as any other grits on the planet.
I am not saying to isolated you self on one topic, but focus on one topic even when you are playing with another. It is good to have a broad understand and experince with a lot of differant aspects of computer science, but always keep focus and dedicated to atleast your favorite topic and if you have to play or slack off, do it on one of the lesser subjects.
When people say 'LINUZ' most people think 'KERNEL HACKER EXTREME' when people say '[insert your name here]' what do you want people to think first '[insert favorite type of hacking here]'
Find what you want to do, do that, focus on that, eat sleep and breath on that, play, slack, tweak on everything else, but keep focused on your main goal, don't slip, and if you do slip get the hell back up fast.
If you are just starting though, it is a differant story. If you are starting, spread way the hell out, try everything at first and see what 1) you really enjoy 2) what you really take to.
Every try graphics programming or Javascript, tried BASIC yet or VMS, pick up a x86 ASM book and a NetBSD CD, every looked at Windows98 or DirectX programming? Try some Visual C++ and then some gcc, GTK/QT/Motif/Leffif, super powered killer robot programming? Try everything at first, find out what give you that RUSH that you can feel, then when you know what you want to do, focus in on that and dedicate most of your time to that.
The only real advice I can give though is don't ever get bored or burnt out, it will kill you. Scap that, on second thought the best advice I can give is that really hot grits in the pants isn't as fun as it may sound, ouch.. It is all fun and games till someone loses a tes^H^H^H^ eye
The more you know, the more questions you ask.
I would like to inform you that they are now watching you. Think about it.
By the way, please turn around, there is a gun barrel at the back of you...
Only if you where a little quicker boy, what a shame, and a smart one to.
For everyone reading slashdot, all of GreyFox's posts from now on are really from CIA agents.
Which is somewhat cool, because Agents rack up a lot of karma, but on the down side Agents have a stuble way of brainwashing you though their period and question mark placements.
From: WhiteHouse
To: Joe Public
The Whitehouse, on behalf of the United States Goverment would like to clear up a few rumors that have been causing an uproar with the citizens of this Great Country.
There was been some acusations and rumors going around that the White House and the United States Goverment are not fully happy with the state of the union. To clear this up, and to fully put out or offical statement on this, on behalf of the United States Goverment we would like to state for the record "We are really fucking pissed".
I know this may come to a surpise to most of the citizens of this Great Country, but ever since the CIA and rosewell conscripies, the Goverment and the White House of this Great Nation of ours, have not really been getting any, and this makes us really pissed off. We (the United States Goverment) watch our citizens going day in and day out getting laid by great looking women, and on behalf of the United States goverment I would like to say "Where is my booty, why don't I get any hoes?" and also like to add "And the United States Goverment is pissed about this"
Thank you for taking the time to read this press release and hope this clears up any details the American public might not be aware about.
Yes Metallica should go after the users trading the mp3 files, not after napaster. The users are commiting the crime, not Napaster.
Think about it, go into a head shop, buy a bong then go smoke some weed out of it. When Mr. Police Man sees you smoking pot, who is he going to arrest, you or the head shop.
What law did the head shop break? None. What law did Napaster break? None.
Did you break a law when you started smoking pot? Yes (At least under the current laws in the United States). Did you break a law when you started trading copyrighted mp3's? Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
Did usenet or [insert isp here] break any laws when they made there newsgroups public? No. Did you break any laws when you posted copyrighted porn to these news groups. Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
So who is responiable you or the head shop? Who broke the law, you or the head shop? Who should get fined or put in jail, you or the head shop?
Napaster *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the company claims, as bongs and newsgroups *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the companies claim.
You can used Napaster to trade legal mp3's (like self-written, self-produced material) as you can use both bongs (for smoking tobacco) and newsgroups (for posting self-produced material). All which are pretty legal.
Does anyone use these things for legal purposes though? No not really, maybe 0.00002 % of the entire population.
Please take responiablity for your actions, even if sometimes you actions are illegal and may laid you in jail.
This is really good IMHO. Not that people are stealing porn, or penthouse is showing off it's huge uh legal team, but they are doing it the right way.
See, they go after the poster, the one that commited the crime, slap him with a small fine and embrass the hell out of him so he doesn't do it again, penthouse gets from cash from it and everyone is happy.
If penthouse decided to go after the news group or hosting provided, this would be a bad thing almost as stupid as if Metallica went after Napaster instead of the users.
Metallica could learn a lot about the way penthouse is handling this. Like I said a million times before, dam Metallica really needs to get some porn and just fsck chill out.
There is two points to be made here, what is legal and what is moral?
Under the (USA) law now, even if you disagree with the laws, even if the laws are completely wrong, it is still the law. What the copyright laws say for *most* Music CDs is that you can not redistrubate any content of the CD without permission. The RIAA, Metallica or anyone that has the right to give permission to redistrubate CD content, did not give anyone permission to post them to a large user base (whatever that user base may be, in this case napaster) in any form.
Legally, the RIAA is right. Under the law it, they own the content that is being posted, and it is being posted without there permission.
This (most "commerical" mp3s) being posted are copyrighted, and who ever owns the copyright can basically do what ever the fuck they want to within the copyright.
Hell Cowboy Neil could sell his music on 8 track tapes and have a copy right "you can only listen to this music under Sony 8 Track tape players and the owner of the 8 track is the ONLY one that can listen to the music, you can't even listen to the music when or where someone else can hear it", sure it is stupid, about as dumb as most copyrights on CDs now, but that is Cowboy Neil's right, just like the right the RIAA or who ever can impose any copyright on their "IP" as they want, as long as it doesn't void any other copyrights or break a law... well pretty much you get the idea.
Legally the RIAA has a strong case, but not against Napster. Listen, if you buy 2 VCRs and use them to bootleg porn, can the porno industry sue sony for "helping" prevents bootleg porn? Hell no. You can walk up to any head shop and buy a one hitter or bong, I mean err uh some smoking device or tobaccoo pipe. These bong as sold as tobaco smoking devices, pretty legal in USA, but who the hell using them for smoking tobaccoo? No one, everyone smokes pot or crack out of them, but they (the head shop) still can sell them, because they aren't implying you use them for illegal purposes (pot and crack are illegal in the US)
The Head shop says "Hey man, these are for uh wooow did you see that, *cough, cough* oh head rush, what where we just talking about? oh yea, these devices are not for illegal purposes, you can only smoke legal substances out of them man, like toboccoo or something. If you get busted it is your own fault dumb ass, you got a lighter?"
The same way napser say "Hey man, do not trade illegal or copyrighted files over this services man or we will ban you ass. Oh you are one of the people that got banned for illegal meticalla mp3s? screw off, this is only for legal purposes only"
I seriously doubt anyone can sue napster over copyright, hell if you can sue any service for having mp3s on it, I could sue AOL, newsgroups, irc servers, web sites, ftp operators and about anything on the Internet. Hell I could uuencode a bunch of mp3's and post them to slashdot or wet_and_greasy_used_porn.com.
If they can sue napaster they could sue about any service on the Internet, and by putting all services on the Internet out of business, guess what NO MORE INTERNET. I doubt this will happen, cause it would really piss of Al Gore (since he created and invented the Intenet with his bare hands), and Al can kick some ass when it comes down to it...
I think the RIAA can and has the right to sue the users that where posting or sharing these files on Napaster, will they? I don't know, but they own the copyright, and if they want to, they could.
Point being, right or not, copyrights exists. Right or not, people that own the copyrights can pretty much get anyway with any dam thing they please under they copyright with their "IP"
So we (open source zealots and slashdot trolls) can do a couple things here. We could continue to break the law, even if it is a stupid law. Find a way to change the laws. Work closly with the RIAA to find a "middle ground" that everyone is somewhat happy with. Troll. Only support artists that release their "IP" under freindly copyrights (check mp3.com). Bitch about it or go view some porn...
I don't know about you, but I am dam hungry, haven't eaten all day, I am going to grab some dinner, what where we talking about?
The square root of everything, all news posted to slashdot is Linux VS Microsoft, please read the FAQ.
Was NT supose to be Microsoft's cross-platform portable OS? I have seen stuff rolling around in old comp.sgi.* posts with people having problems getting NT on their MIPS proc... I know it isn't alpha, but the point being, wasn't one of NT goals to run on every proc know to man?
Maybe it was either a dream or an lsd trip... Mmmm roasted white rabbit never tasted so good.
It has been slow since the maintainer of the project (Tim Leary) passed away a few years ago... I seen one running at a comdex a few years ago, the machine keep getting a "God Complex" whenever the self-awareness patch was loaded into kernel space.... The machine had a huge ego and starting sending tcp/ip packets to Solaris machine, reportly the packets contained things like "So, check me out, Linux stud, that's right, you want to get with this baby" and "Check out my uptime chic, my uptime is huge, and that isn't the only thing huge, my other huge thing has a high uptime to, want to get with this baby?"
Microsoft did intergrate a self-awareness patch into Windows98, but everytime they installed it, it was slow, sluggish and crashed a lot. Most thought it was just windows being windows, but some experts believe that the machine was depressed and tried to commit sucide once it was aware of it's true nature...
Microsoft advised users to install the "heavy drinking" patch, to "easy the pain" of the Windows self-awareness patch.
Uh, correct me if I am wrong, but didn't VMS die a long time ago? I remember going to it's funeral, the only thing I can conclude from this, is that Compaq == Jesus Christ if they can raise the dead like him...
Seriously, is VMS still alive and kicking? Does it have any user base, commerical support (besides compaq) or community behind it?
Differance between OpenVMS and VMS? Is OpenVMS *really* Open, or Open for marketing reasons?
Sorry, when it comes to VMS I am an idiot, it was before my time
Everyone loves screen shots
Test your for your Slash Dot Cookie
Mine was choclate chip Mmmmm
(Police Interrogation Room)
Agent Weston: As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Malda. It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Rob A. Malda, program writer for a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias CmdrTaco and are guilty of virtually every computer [copyright] crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Malda. You're here because we need your help. We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself Anonymous Coward. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.
CmdrTaco: Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call.
Agent Weston: Um, Mr. Malda. You disappoint me.
CmdrTaco: You can't scare me with this Kerbose crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call.
Agent Weston: Tell me, Mr. Malda, what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak.... You're going to help us, Mr. Malda whether you want to or not.