Gnutella has some fundamental problems in the way it operates - ie. the way it thrashes the bandwidth to the max. Like many Australian ISPs, my ISP allocates a certain download limit to me; it's necessary due to the high cost of net traffic here. When i tried gnutella, it sucked a constant 3.2 k/sec stream down my modem, even when i wasn't downloading anything! I was forced to shut it down before it destroyed my entire month's bandwidth allocation! We need something between Gnutella and Napster.
Gnutella
Pros: Disperse, difficult to block, truly communal, open
Cons: Sledgehammer method of data sharing, not really that smart, bandwidth sucker Napster
Pros: Efficient, smart, conservative
Cons: Closed, limited to specific file formats, seems to get less features every release rather than more (M$ Syndrome), easy to destroy because of it's central login nature
The fundamental problem is that there's a difference between LAW and JUSTICE. JUSTICE is what's GOOD... LAW is what the court's decide:)
Of course Napster is good. Quite frankly, any trading of mp3s is good... I've been doing it for years, and I remember a time when a guy called Blex had a single html page that listed all of a few dozem FTP sites that were serving mp3s... it's certainly grown since then. And I can honestly, honestly say that downloading of illegal mp3s has NEVER stopped me buying a CD. I own about 180 CDs, (including 10 Sonic Youth albums he he he), 80% of which i've bought since I began leeching and trading mp3s. On top of this, the opportunities offered to unsigned artists by services like mp3.com and downloadmusic.com.au is immense.
Trading mp3s is good. But it is illegal, and that's the issue. A court of law isn't there to decide what's RIGHT, it's there to decide what's LAWFUL, and Napster were, unfortunatly, breaking the law as it stands today, and therefore, according to the law, they deserve this. Solution: Change the law. Recognise the importance of freedom of distribution in the statutes.
By the way, to the guy who suggests encoding mp3s at 320kbps to get CD quality, you are a GOIT. Every heard of people still having to connect to the net by MODEMS? Ever considered that tripling the filesize cuts by a THIRD how many mp3s you can have? People who encode their mp3s past 128kps, or 160 at the most, are missing the point entirely.
I've found this too; A while back I did a traceroute from my PC on Adelaide based Webzone Internet to my mate, a suburb away, on the Adelaide dial-up of Eisa Internet. The traceroute had 27 hops... first bouncing from Adelaide, to Melborne, then over to Perth, then to the US! My humble packets bounced around about 8 different hosts all over the US, before finnally heading back to Perth, then to Sydney, then finally back here to Adelaide and to my mate's PC. It's just stupid, and the only thing I can blame it on is the dodgy Australian internet structure, that apparently fails to route locally between some major IPSs (ie. Eisa, and Connect.com, who Webzone connect through). It is very unfortunate, but it appears that the US still plays an overly important role in the Internet structure, and other countries should make an effort to make the internet truly global.
This has definatly put me off MICROS~1 (as if I haven't been put off already). But now I wouldn't even consider buying a PC that's preinstalled with Windows. I've been considering buying a brand new PC lately, and although my current computer is totally Linux-Mandrake, I was willing to give Win2K a try. How can you argue with a mouse pointer that casts a shadow? But this has changed my mind. When I get a new PC, I'm just getting the hardware, and installing an OS I have complete control over. Microsoft show no signs of discontinuing the trend of treating customers and users like shit. As far as I'm concerned, I have the right to own the software that makes MY comptuer run. It's all a move towards a world where we own nothing, we're all just purchasing-slaves to the companies.
I remember my old 8-bit Amstrad CPC computer. I don't remember reading any licening agreements on its software. As far as I was aware, I had the disc with the software on it, hence I owned the software. I could do what I wanted with it. It was mine. Now that whole pretty basic concept has gone out the window (pun!).
The arguement by some po$ter$ that this is just typical commie-pinko-slashdot-pro-piracy-whinging is rubbish. I buy all the software I can afford to, and after that point I would own no more, if copying software did not exist. For instance, when I ran Win95, I could not afford to purchase Office. That simple. I'm a student, I had no money to pay that much for a word processor, so I could not have bought it. If it were not for me borrowing a copy off someone else to install I probably would have been typing up my reports in Write. Point: Piracy rarely stops software purchase, rather it allows people who couldn't afford to buy the product in the first place (ie. non-customers) to use it. Just like MP3s don't stop people buying CDs. I spend loads of money on CDs...a significant proportion of my income. What can I say, I'm a music addict. One of the reasons I still live at home and don't own A car I guess. In any case, I also download loads of MP3s off the internet. But it's never stopped me buying a CD because I spend all I CAN on CDs then fulfil the rest of my music needs with MP3s. Umm this has kind of gone way off topic now, so I'll end rant here.
OMFG, what a great article. This is something that's needed to be expressed in a major public forum like/. for ages. Increasingly we're all faced by the pressure of corporations impinging on our freedom to do what we want and to do what's right. I just got to my university's computer suite to read/. after a lecture for the subject "Research Methods in Ecology". Today's lecture wasn't so much about research methods as it was about designing your research so it would be supported by corporate backers financially. Money above integrity once again. It's refressing to read an article like this, that hits the nail on the head to thoroughly.
What was the deal with the book for Starship Titanic? Sorry, but it was pretty average. It should have been left to the writer to write it, not the actor/comedian based on your concepts...
The fact that some people might believe that a certain length of sentance isnt a long enough time isn't the point. Most of us live in free, democratic societies, based on the principal that when you commit a crime you face the justice system, you are tried by a judge and a jury of your peers, and you are given a sentance under the law. Thats democracy. But we seem to be forgetting that now days, and deciding somehow that "the law is failing", and that people need to take things into their own hands. When a person is sent to jail for 18 years (and if you stop to think about it for a while, having 18 years stolen from your life in an environment where most probably you will face sexual abuse yourself is a pretty extreme punishment, personally I'd rather die than be sent to jail for that long) thats the decision of a lawful, democratic society, and it should be respected if we respect the democracy we have. Publishing criminals details on the WWW might be legal, and justifiable in many cases, but if it allows people to take the law into their own hands then it is very questionable.
Um. No. and No. Australia wasnt a Penal colony. Parts of it were. The colony of New South Wales was about 200 years ago, as was the colony in Van Diemens land, which, by the way, isn't Australia, its the little island floating off down the bottom called Tasmania. Various other colonies were. Some colonies, like South Australia, weren't. Then in 1901, long after the convicts grandchildren had settled down with all the settlers who came here by free will, all the colonies joined up to call themselves Australia.
Sorry, I get so sick of anyone from overseas getting on the "You're all a bunch of convicts!" vibe in reference to Aussies.
Hmmm the article is about the American domination of the internet, and yet you accuse me of "defending my own little sphere of the world"...? Because they prop their industries up with illegal cartels, aided and abetted by the gov't, which has made it impossible for them to compete internationally.... hmmm like America doesn't do sneaky stuff this in their own country. It's got nothing at all to do with the topic, but shall I mention paying your farmers NOT to grow crops to keep prices high?
Once again, you're stuck in your own little sphere of perception. You seem to think Yahoo and Hotmail are the only free email places on the internet. I don't have a free email address, but when I did a few years ago it was at hello.net.au, an Australian email service, and I know for a fact no data between me and it passed over American soil. Thats what TRACERT is for:)
I think your comments are biased, in that it depends on how you want to look at the world. "What makes the world go around? The answer: Economics. " - is that necessarily true? People in this day and age like to think so, but the fact is, the Internet has existed for many a year independent of economics. The internet doesn't exist so people can throw their money at amazon.com. That's just something new that comes along in recent years.
It just depends on how you approach the Internet. If i use an Australian search engine / portal, like Anzwers, i get loads of Australian content. Sure there's not as much of it as American content on the WWW, but Australia has a lower population.
You'r technological achievement? Come on. I'd suggest you have a look around your ISP or whatever and spot the MADE IN JAPAN, MADE IN TAIWAN stickers over all the equipment.
And what does it mean to say that American's maintain it? People in every country the Internet exists maintain it. I maintain the network at My Isp, Webzone Australia, and I'm not American. In fact I can't recall every speaking to anyone related to my ISP who's American. We connect through an Australian backbone, Australian communications companies, our hardware is mostly sourced in Australia.
It's certainly true that, on the face of it, a lot of the Internet appears American to you, just as on the face of it a lot of the Internet appears corporate. But dig a little deeper, think outside the square, and you'll realise that, as a global network, it is operated and controlled by people globally.
I'm wondering why so many countries, particularly European ones, haven't set up "com" and "net" etc. under their national TLD. In Australia, there would be no such thing as "coke.au", only "coke.com.au" or "coke.net.au"... this would help solve this problem... Coca-Cola could grab "coke.com.ch", and this dude could, because he is essentially creating a non-profit information website about cocaine, could grab "coke.org.ch".
This method works great in Australia... Microsoft haven't even registered "microsoft.net.au" in Australia, because they are a COMpany, not a NETwork.
Slashdot Mirror
Gnutella has some fundamental problems in the way it operates - ie. the way it thrashes the bandwidth to the max. Like many Australian ISPs, my ISP allocates a certain download limit to me; it's necessary due to the high cost of net traffic here. When i tried gnutella, it sucked a constant 3.2 k/sec stream down my modem, even when i wasn't downloading anything! I was forced to shut it down before it destroyed my entire month's bandwidth allocation! We need something between Gnutella and Napster.
Gnutella
Pros: Disperse, difficult to block, truly communal, open
Cons: Sledgehammer method of data sharing, not really that smart, bandwidth sucker
Napster
Pros: Efficient, smart, conservative
Cons: Closed, limited to specific file formats, seems to get less features every release rather than more (M$ Syndrome), easy to destroy because of it's central login nature
The fundamental problem is that there's a difference between LAW and JUSTICE. JUSTICE is what's GOOD... LAW is what the court's decide :)
Of course Napster is good. Quite frankly, any trading of mp3s is good... I've been doing it for years, and I remember a time when a guy called Blex had a single html page that listed all of a few dozem FTP sites that were serving mp3s... it's certainly grown since then. And I can honestly, honestly say that downloading of illegal mp3s has NEVER stopped me buying a CD. I own about 180 CDs, (including 10 Sonic Youth albums he he he), 80% of which i've bought since I began leeching and trading mp3s. On top of this, the opportunities offered to unsigned artists by services like mp3.com and downloadmusic.com.au is immense.
Trading mp3s is good. But it is illegal, and that's the issue. A court of law isn't there to decide what's RIGHT, it's there to decide what's LAWFUL, and Napster were, unfortunatly, breaking the law as it stands today, and therefore, according to the law, they deserve this. Solution: Change the law. Recognise the importance of freedom of distribution in the statutes.
By the way, to the guy who suggests encoding mp3s at 320kbps to get CD quality, you are a GOIT. Every heard of people still having to connect to the net by MODEMS? Ever considered that tripling the filesize cuts by a THIRD how many mp3s you can have? People who encode their mp3s past 128kps, or 160 at the most, are missing the point entirely.
I've found this too; A while back I did a traceroute from my PC on Adelaide based Webzone Internet to my mate, a suburb away, on the Adelaide dial-up of Eisa Internet. The traceroute had 27 hops... first bouncing from Adelaide, to Melborne, then over to Perth, then to the US! My humble packets bounced around about 8 different hosts all over the US, before finnally heading back to Perth, then to Sydney, then finally back here to Adelaide and to my mate's PC. It's just stupid, and the only thing I can blame it on is the dodgy Australian internet structure, that apparently fails to route locally between some major IPSs (ie. Eisa, and Connect.com, who Webzone connect through). It is very unfortunate, but it appears that the US still plays an overly important role in the Internet structure, and other countries should make an effort to make the internet truly global.
This has definatly put me off MICROS~1 (as if I haven't been put off already). But now I wouldn't even consider buying a PC that's preinstalled with Windows. I've been considering buying a brand new PC lately, and although my current computer is totally Linux-Mandrake, I was willing to give Win2K a try. How can you argue with a mouse pointer that casts a shadow? But this has changed my mind. When I get a new PC, I'm just getting the hardware, and installing an OS I have complete control over. Microsoft show no signs of discontinuing the trend of treating customers and users like shit. As far as I'm concerned, I have the right to own the software that makes MY comptuer run. It's all a move towards a world where we own nothing, we're all just purchasing-slaves to the companies.
I remember my old 8-bit Amstrad CPC computer. I don't remember reading any licening agreements on its software. As far as I was aware, I had the disc with the software on it, hence I owned the software. I could do what I wanted with it. It was mine. Now that whole pretty basic concept has gone out the window (pun!).
The arguement by some po$ter$ that this is just typical commie-pinko-slashdot-pro-piracy-whinging is rubbish. I buy all the software I can afford to, and after that point I would own no more, if copying software did not exist. For instance, when I ran Win95, I could not afford to purchase Office. That simple. I'm a student, I had no money to pay that much for a word processor, so I could not have bought it. If it were not for me borrowing a copy off someone else to install I probably would have been typing up my reports in Write. Point: Piracy rarely stops software purchase, rather it allows people who couldn't afford to buy the product in the first place (ie. non-customers) to use it. Just like MP3s don't stop people buying CDs. I spend loads of money on CDs...a significant proportion of my income. What can I say, I'm a music addict. One of the reasons I still live at home and don't own A car I guess. In any case, I also download loads of MP3s off the internet. But it's never stopped me buying a CD because I spend all I CAN on CDs then fulfil the rest of my music needs with MP3s. Umm this has kind of gone way off topic now, so I'll end rant here.
OMFG, what a great article. This is something that's needed to be expressed in a major public forum like /. for ages. Increasingly we're all faced by the pressure of corporations impinging on our freedom to do what we want and to do what's right. I just got to my university's computer suite to read /. after a lecture for the subject "Research Methods in Ecology". Today's lecture wasn't so much about research methods as it was about designing your research so it would be supported by corporate backers financially. Money above integrity once again. It's refressing to read an article like this, that hits the nail on the head to thoroughly.
What was the deal with the book for Starship Titanic? Sorry, but it was pretty average. It should have been left to the writer to write it, not the actor/comedian based on your concepts...
The fact that some people might believe that a certain length of sentance isnt a long enough time isn't the point. Most of us live in free, democratic societies, based on the principal that when you commit a crime you face the justice system, you are tried by a judge and a jury of your peers, and you are given a sentance under the law. Thats democracy. But we seem to be forgetting that now days, and deciding somehow that "the law is failing", and that people need to take things into their own hands. When a person is sent to jail for 18 years (and if you stop to think about it for a while, having 18 years stolen from your life in an environment where most probably you will face sexual abuse yourself is a pretty extreme punishment, personally I'd rather die than be sent to jail for that long) thats the decision of a lawful, democratic society, and it should be respected if we respect the democracy we have. Publishing criminals details on the WWW might be legal, and justifiable in many cases, but if it allows people to take the law into their own hands then it is very questionable.
Sorry, I get so sick of anyone from overseas getting on the "You're all a bunch of convicts!" vibe in reference to Aussies.
Hmmm the article is about the American domination of the internet, and yet you accuse me of "defending my own little sphere of the world"...? Because they prop their industries up with illegal cartels, aided and abetted by the gov't, which has made it impossible for them to compete internationally.... hmmm like America doesn't do sneaky stuff this in their own country. It's got nothing at all to do with the topic, but shall I mention paying your farmers NOT to grow crops to keep prices high?
:)
Once again, you're stuck in your own little sphere of perception. You seem to think Yahoo and Hotmail are the only free email places on the internet. I don't have a free email address, but when I did a few years ago it was at hello.net.au, an Australian email service, and I know for a fact no data between me and it passed over American soil. Thats what TRACERT is for
I think your comments are biased, in that it depends on how you want to look at the world. "What makes the world go around? The answer: Economics. " - is that necessarily true? People in this day and age like to think so, but the fact is, the Internet has existed for many a year independent of economics. The internet doesn't exist so people can throw their money at amazon.com. That's just something new that comes along in recent years.
It just depends on how you approach the Internet. If i use an Australian search engine / portal, like Anzwers, i get loads of Australian content. Sure there's not as much of it as American content on the WWW, but Australia has a lower population.
You'r technological achievement? Come on. I'd suggest you have a look around your ISP or whatever and spot the MADE IN JAPAN, MADE IN TAIWAN stickers over all the equipment.
And what does it mean to say that American's maintain it? People in every country the Internet exists maintain it. I maintain the network at My Isp, Webzone Australia, and I'm not American. In fact I can't recall every speaking to anyone related to my ISP who's American. We connect through an Australian backbone, Australian communications companies, our hardware is mostly sourced in Australia.
It's certainly true that, on the face of it, a lot of the Internet appears American to you, just as on the face of it a lot of the Internet appears corporate. But dig a little deeper, think outside the square, and you'll realise that, as a global network, it is operated and controlled by people globally.
I'm wondering why so many countries, particularly European ones, haven't set up "com" and "net" etc. under their national TLD. In Australia, there would be no such thing as "coke.au", only "coke.com.au" or "coke.net.au"... this would help solve this problem... Coca-Cola could grab "coke.com.ch", and this dude could, because he is essentially creating a non-profit information website about cocaine, could grab "coke.org.ch".
This method works great in Australia... Microsoft haven't even registered "microsoft.net.au" in Australia, because they are a COMpany, not a NETwork.