Realize that people will pirate stuff, but also realize that companies should not be allowed to make money off of people stealing from other people and deliver the names to Napster. Soon enough, they'll be shut down for good.
That's one of the biggest complaints about piracy and Napster... Gnutella is still obscure enough that it doesn't really make much of a blip on the radar screen, i don't think... For instance, if i'm on the subway and hear someone talking about how cool "Napster" is, it's an easy name to remember... It I hear "Gnutella", it could be "Nutella", "Newtellah", etc... All the while, Napster's the brand name, trying to figure out a way to rake in some cash and some profits from other peoples' efforts and investments.
no shit. I was hoping we could make it through a week without mention of either "mp3" or "napster"... unfortunately, that Dell MP3 player story ruined the streak yesterday, and now we're stuck in a Gnutella rut....
Come on, slash... there's plenty of other trully INTERESTING things out there to report... How about Intel's announcement of extremely low power processors? And how they've tried to counter the threat that Transmeta could pose? I submitted a story about that a few days ago and... found rejection.
Now.. personally, I would think that putting up material to be downloaded in order to finger people would ammount to entrapment, as you are basically going somewhere where you *KNOW* that people are tempted to download software, and put up software they might want...
I think that entrapment is only possible if they actively solicit the downloads. Like browsing users hard drives and saying "Hey, you like this band? Connect to me and download these other songs by them that you don't have!!!". Just sitting there with the files available is like standing on a street corner and waiting for someone to ask you where to score... Which would (as far as I know) make searching that person "probable cause", not entrapment.
Of course, like everyone else here, I am not a lawyer! I just think that entrapment can only occur if the police actively encourage the commission of a crime. They can bait a trap, they just can't force or trick you to take the bait.
It's not at all censorship. The government, PETA, and/or the boogymen are not preventing the PETA.org folks from saying whatever they want want to say. They're just saying that they can't say it "where" they want to say it, because it could cause confusion as to who's actually saying what's being said..
Who has parody.com registered? Someone should check with them and see if they'ed rent hosts off their name. There'd be no confusion between "www.peta.com" and "peta.parody.com". Or something like that.
I think that'd be a GREAT thing, if when you registered your name the interNIC would give you the name you wanted with the suffix you asked for (to "classify" yourself) and then promptly locked out the other suffix's from being registered... It's a little too late in the game for them to even attempt to do that, though.
If I own it, the government has no right to steal it. Especialy since the US government has no jurisdiction over international property like the internet!
Well... all the.com's,.org's, and.net's are managed by a US based company, making them accountable to the "laws of the land", I'd think. If you don't like that, you don't need to move, but you just need to register your names (and probably host your server) in countries with laws that are more to your liking.
So far as the lawlessness of the web goes... Forget about it never being regulated. The government has stepped back from it long enough and is witnessing that business and individuals have absolutely NO ABILITY to keep themselves in check in terms of controlling fraud, privacy and (gasp!) piracy. They're pretty well justified in saying "look, you all had your chance, and you've blown it".
But given the global nature of the internet, if you don't like what they might do, as i said earlier, just get a name from a non-US based entity and host it elsewhere.... pretty easy work around, compared to the days when people would spout "if you don't like this country, just leave".
As a file format, my major complaint is that it is heavily optimized for printing nicely at the expense of usability when reading it on a computer; for example page breaks, having no control over font sizes, usually being forced to have the document fill the screen to avoid horizontal scrolling.
Acrobat was created before the web took hold as being a way that people using different sets of applications could exchange data using a higher common denominator than ASCII text.
The disadvantages that you speak of are actually advantages to others. Designers can send fully formatted files to one another and printers and know that each recipient is looking the same exact thing.
If 2 scholars were coloaborating across the internet, one using Windows and one using Linux, they could note things to one another such as "the 3rd word on the 14th line of the 28th page needs to be changed". That statement means absolutely nothing with web pages because they render differently depending on platform, browser, and the available fonts on a system.
HTML and PDF's both have their advantages and disadvantages. I HOPE that HTML doesn't ever get extended to the point that it tries to compete with PDF as a file format. It'd add way too much overhead to our browsers, which would only lead to a buggier internet experience.
What? He's kind of pissy at them for trying to play him as a fool.
Things like submitting doctored evidence (remember the video tape?) and asking for a copy of windows 98 with out IE 4 and receiving a computer that wouldn't boot do things like make judges get angry.
The entire case, Microsoft disrespected him, forgetting that he was the one that was one person they should have been trying to win over. It's not like he brought the case against them. The DOJ did. It was his job to hear it.
No. The appeals court simply said they'ed take the case, and if they got it, all of the judges would hear the case rather than the three random ones which would be chosen. Since (presumably) more than half the judges in the appeals court have sided favorably with Microsoft in the past, this was viewed as a win for Microsoft. That way, there isn't a chance that the 3 random judges would be the 3 that dislike them.
However, with Jackson's ruling, if the Supreme Court decides to take the case, the Appeals court gets completely by-passed, in the interest of speeding up resolution of the case before it adversely effects things like the economy, etc.
I highly doubt that Adobe and Macromedia are at all worried that Corel might steal their marketshare... Corel's apps have always aimed for the low-end of the markets, where as Adobe and Macromedia each compete with one another for the high end. Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens... Now if Photoshop, InDesign (or more importantly, Quark XPress), Illustrator and Freehand arrived for Linux, then the users of the programs would take notice and possibly think about switching.
It's almost like saying "hey, I got Wordpad to run under WINE... Now all the Word users in my company can switch to Linux". It's just not happening. There's an EXTREME amount of loyalty among graphic artists and the applications they use. Witness the Mac's 50+% market share in the graphics segments.
With colocation, you're no longer sharing machines with other sites, but you still are sharing the pipes... If one machine gets, say, slashdotted, and your host doesn't have enough bandwidth set aside to handle it, your machine is going to go without it's bandwidth until interest in that machine dies down.
Whatever. If someone advertises a 10 megabit (ethernet) connection to the backbone for your machine for less than $1200-$1500 a month, you're going to end up sharing that line with other people. You just need to make sure that the place you choose is either big enough to be able to handle the demand, or that most of their machines/sites are small enough that you'll never end up fighting for bandwidth.
Another example: Avoid colocating at places that have more than a few servers hosting adult sites.
You should also make sure that your ISP hosts absolutely NOTHING that might ever get picked up by slashdot... Otherwise one of your rack neighbors might end up eating all of your bandwidth.
Honestly, though, remember this: The more you pay, the better service you'll get. If you pay $100/month for 10 megabit accss to the internet, you'll end up sharing your line with probably 30 other servers. If you're paying $500/month, it might just be 5 or 6 servers you're sharing with. Of course, you'll still need to actually ask and verify that that's the case... It'd be even better if the ISP you chose was nearby yourself you you could check out their facilities occassionally.
If people really wanted to shift away from the x86, the first thing they'ed do is proveide a way for x86 apps to run on other platforms, a la FX32 (is that what digital's app was called?).
If you can provide x86 compatibility across multiple platforms, you could run WINE on those platforms and run all your Windows apps on whatever platform of your choosing... Kind of like Java on steriods.
Anyways, the way to get away from x86 is to provide the means to run those apps on different archetictures. Once those take hold, then you can start deploying native apps...
Or even so, if Wine were ported, would that make it so that Windows apps were just a recompile away from running on other processors/operating systems?
For that you can thank Microsoft's amazing track record at porting to different platforms.
Even when NT did run on stuff other than x86, Microsoft was not alone in not porting many apps... No one else did either, except for the VERY few that wanted to/needed to eke out the extra performance.
And it's not just a Microsoft problem. Linux run on close to everything under the sun, but can you run Oracle 8 on anything but intel? How about DB2? WINE? WordPerfect? How about even Netscape 4.x? They all are available for x86 and eschew platforms such as SPARC and Alpha.
x86 isn't going anywhere, no matter how much intel and everyone else wants it to. It's popular because it's popular because it's popular....
How can this possibly be a good thing? If nothing else, it's going to seal Gnutella's fate in the public eye as a tool for piracy. Once Microsoft's content protection system is broken (which will most likely happen... has any access control system NOT been broken, much less any from Microsoft?) everyone will scramble to point fingers at who's to blame.
Is it SightSounds fault for putting the movie on Gnutella voluntarily? Is it SightSounds fault for choosing to use Microsofts system? Is it Microsofts fault for faulty security? Or is it Gnutella's fault for beening a haven for piracy?
No matter what the facts are, it's only going to be reported as the "Hackers that use Gnuetalla defeated Microsofts content protection scheme, which was used by SiteSound to distribute it's movies on Gnutella, thereby causing countless losses to the company's involved".
It's also odd that a company like this would want to embark on SUCH a risky endeavor on the eve of their IPO (they're in their quite period, according to the news.com article). Quite risky. This could move could make or break them...
If (however unlikely, in my mind) they're successful, and Microsofts system stands to the test though, it'll stand to revolutionize a LOT of companies web strategies. No longer will content companies have to maintain and pay for huge pipes to the backbones. They'll just have to get their files uploaded into a few nodes running Gnutella and watch their content proliferate....
You hardly need to run through every combination of letters, though. Once you figure out where the vowel's go and the s's and t's, everything else falls into place pretty quickly.
Something's up. I'd find it very hard to believe that I can decode a message encoded with 88-bit encryption faster than my computer can brute force a 40 bit keyspace.
Encryption is hard to understand. You can't judge how strong an encryption is by its keyspace: a newspaper-style cryptogram has a larger keyspace than DES.
A 40-bit keyspace is MUCH larger than any of the cryptograms that just use letter substitutions.
The only way to find out how good an encryption system really is, is by trying to break it.
Unless you're not a cryptographer. Because even if you can't break it, someone else probably can, in most cases.
If you want to learn more about cryptography, go to counterpane's web site and poke around. Along with lot's of well-written papers, there's also a plethora of links to other peoples and companies' sites with related research and information.
Well, the AES candidates are receiving a LOT more scrutiny than any other algorithms... The top minds from a lot of companies, governments, and univeristies are all at work trying to figure out which one stands up the best for it's purpose of replacing DES. Once one is decided upon, I'd bet/hope that people use it, unless they're qualified enough to explain WHY they'ed choose another that hadn't gone through the AES review process.
I have NO DOUBT that SAlbini was the first to applaud her effort.
From centerstage.net: He's recorded albums for Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Breeders, the Pixies, Helmet, Cheap trick, Jesus Lizard, Bush, and "about 1000 bands you've never heard of." Courtney Love asked if he would produce Hole's recent album, and Albini said -- surprise:) -- no...
Search for them on the internet... Their dispisal of one another is quite documented... Which is what makes the fact that she had to rely on what he said 10 years ago to make her point. The least she could have done is think it out for herself...
"I don't feel like embarrassing Kurt by talking about what a psycho hosebeast his wife is, especially when he knows it already." -Steve Albini, Producer of In Utero
1 - I can hardly see how a subscription model would work. One of the really nice things about CD's is that you can buy them, and listen to them wherever you take them. Most subscription models are built around the idea that you can only listen to them on the computer you're using when you download the song. Plus, you get something physical for your money. Not many people will be content giving their money to a dotcom taking with them only the assurance that they'll be allowed continued and non-interupted access to their music. Not with the way they've been falling like domino's as of recent.
2 - If Napster kills off CD's, it's unlikely that DVD-Audio will even make it to the scene, so thinking that Napster could enable DVD-Audio is silly... The widespread use of Napster is showing that people aren't demanding higher quality recordings, which will make DVD audio that much harder to sell.
3 - No matter what you think and hope, the fact is that the recording industry will and needs to survive whatever transition takes place... WE need them to put up the money for artists to record their songs and publicize them. Napster does nothing to promote new music, it's still the burden of the labels. If anything positive comes from Napster, it will be that artists may now or soon have a bargaining chip to force more favorable deals from the labels.
4 - Record store are still one of the best ways for us consumers to find new music... You can just browse through their merchandise and see what looks interesting. Plus there's employees and stuff who you can hum a couple notes to and they'll tell you which CD the song is from. There are advantages to them, so i wouldn't hope to get them out of the picture just yet. Oh yeah, and CDNow is screwed last time i knew... About to go under, aren't they?
5 - Napster vs. the RIAA is nothing like the US vs. Microsoft... that case shouldn't even be brought into this discussion
Yes, but without it there would be no way that the GPL could enforce upon others the REQUIREMENT of redistributing source code to all who asked. I'm not exactly sure what Non sequitur means, but if it's anything like a catch-22, i'd think we're stuck in a chicken and egg type situation.
Yeah... she's not very original, is she? How nice of here to pretty much read Albini's diatribe from a decade earlier verbatim (she even uses the 7-11 metaphor) without at least giving credit to who first came up with it. No wonder Steve hates her.
Slashdot Mirror
Realize that people will pirate stuff, but also realize that companies should not be allowed to make money off of people stealing from other people and deliver the names to Napster. Soon enough, they'll be shut down for good.
That's one of the biggest complaints about piracy and Napster... Gnutella is still obscure enough that it doesn't really make much of a blip on the radar screen, i don't think... For instance, if i'm on the subway and hear someone talking about how cool "Napster" is, it's an easy name to remember... It I hear "Gnutella", it could be "Nutella", "Newtellah", etc... All the while, Napster's the brand name, trying to figure out a way to rake in some cash and some profits from other peoples' efforts and investments.
no shit. I was hoping we could make it through a week without mention of either "mp3" or "napster"... unfortunately, that Dell MP3 player story ruined the streak yesterday, and now we're stuck in a Gnutella rut....
... found rejection.
Come on, slash... there's plenty of other trully INTERESTING things out there to report... How about Intel's announcement of extremely low power processors? And how they've tried to counter the threat that Transmeta could pose? I submitted a story about that a few days ago and
Now.. personally, I would think that putting up material to be downloaded in order to finger people would ammount to entrapment, as you are basically going somewhere where you *KNOW* that people are tempted to download software, and put up software they might want...
I think that entrapment is only possible if they actively solicit the downloads. Like browsing users hard drives and saying "Hey, you like this band? Connect to me and download these other songs by them that you don't have!!!". Just sitting there with the files available is like standing on a street corner and waiting for someone to ask you where to score... Which would (as far as I know) make searching that person "probable cause", not entrapment.
Of course, like everyone else here, I am not a lawyer! I just think that entrapment can only occur if the police actively encourage the commission of a crime. They can bait a trap, they just can't force or trick you to take the bait.
128 kilobits / second * 8 bits (or seconds) = 128 kilobytes * 8 (128Kb's per MB) = 64 seconds, not counting headers/tags/etc.
It's not at all censorship. The government, PETA, and/or the boogymen are not preventing the PETA.org folks from saying whatever they want want to say. They're just saying that they can't say it "where" they want to say it, because it could cause confusion as to who's actually saying what's being said..
Who has parody.com registered? Someone should check with them and see if they'ed rent hosts off their name. There'd be no confusion between "www.peta.com" and "peta.parody.com". Or something like that.
I think that'd be a GREAT thing, if when you registered your name the interNIC would give you the name you wanted with the suffix you asked for (to "classify" yourself) and then promptly locked out the other suffix's from being registered... It's a little too late in the game for them to even attempt to do that, though.
If I own it, the government has no right to steal it. Especialy since the US government has no jurisdiction over international property like the internet!
.com's, .org's, and .net's are managed by a US based company, making them accountable to the "laws of the land", I'd think. If you don't like that, you don't need to move, but you just need to register your names (and probably host your server) in countries with laws that are more to your liking.
Well... all the
So far as the lawlessness of the web goes... Forget about it never being regulated. The government has stepped back from it long enough and is witnessing that business and individuals have absolutely NO ABILITY to keep themselves in check in terms of controlling fraud, privacy and (gasp!) piracy. They're pretty well justified in saying "look, you all had your chance, and you've blown it".
But given the global nature of the internet, if you don't like what they might do, as i said earlier, just get a name from a non-US based entity and host it elsewhere.... pretty easy work around, compared to the days when people would spout "if you don't like this country, just leave".
As a file format, my major complaint is that it is heavily optimized for printing nicely at the expense of usability when reading it on a computer; for example page breaks, having no control over font sizes, usually being forced to have the document fill the screen to avoid horizontal scrolling.
Acrobat was created before the web took hold as being a way that people using different sets of applications could exchange data using a higher common denominator than ASCII text.
The disadvantages that you speak of are actually advantages to others. Designers can send fully formatted files to one another and printers and know that each recipient is looking the same exact thing.
If 2 scholars were coloaborating across the internet, one using Windows and one using Linux, they could note things to one another such as "the 3rd word on the 14th line of the 28th page needs to be changed". That statement means absolutely nothing with web pages because they render differently depending on platform, browser, and the available fonts on a system.
HTML and PDF's both have their advantages and disadvantages. I HOPE that HTML doesn't ever get extended to the point that it tries to compete with PDF as a file format. It'd add way too much overhead to our browsers, which would only lead to a buggier internet experience.
What? He's kind of pissy at them for trying to play him as a fool.
Things like submitting doctored evidence (remember the video tape?) and asking for a copy of windows 98 with out IE 4 and receiving a computer that wouldn't boot do things like make judges get angry.
The entire case, Microsoft disrespected him, forgetting that he was the one that was one person they should have been trying to win over. It's not like he brought the case against them. The DOJ did. It was his job to hear it.
No. The appeals court simply said they'ed take the case, and if they got it, all of the judges would hear the case rather than the three random ones which would be chosen. Since (presumably) more than half the judges in the appeals court have sided favorably with Microsoft in the past, this was viewed as a win for Microsoft. That way, there isn't a chance that the 3 random judges would be the 3 that dislike them.
However, with Jackson's ruling, if the Supreme Court decides to take the case, the Appeals court gets completely by-passed, in the interest of speeding up resolution of the case before it adversely effects things like the economy, etc.
I highly doubt that Adobe and Macromedia are at all worried that Corel might steal their marketshare... Corel's apps have always aimed for the low-end of the markets, where as Adobe and Macromedia each compete with one another for the high end. Also, no users of Illustrator or Freehand are going to jump to Linux when CorelDraw arrives. It'll not even register a blip on their radar screens... Now if Photoshop, InDesign (or more importantly, Quark XPress), Illustrator and Freehand arrived for Linux, then the users of the programs would take notice and possibly think about switching.
It's almost like saying "hey, I got Wordpad to run under WINE... Now all the Word users in my company can switch to Linux". It's just not happening. There's an EXTREME amount of loyalty among graphic artists and the applications they use. Witness the Mac's 50+% market share in the graphics segments.
Colocation.
Not virtual hosting.
I'm not.
With colocation, you're no longer sharing machines with other sites, but you still are sharing the pipes... If one machine gets, say, slashdotted, and your host doesn't have enough bandwidth set aside to handle it, your machine is going to go without it's bandwidth until interest in that machine dies down.
Whatever. If someone advertises a 10 megabit (ethernet) connection to the backbone for your machine for less than $1200-$1500 a month, you're going to end up sharing that line with other people. You just need to make sure that the place you choose is either big enough to be able to handle the demand, or that most of their machines/sites are small enough that you'll never end up fighting for bandwidth.
Another example: Avoid colocating at places that have more than a few servers hosting adult sites.
You should also make sure that your ISP hosts absolutely NOTHING that might ever get picked up by slashdot... Otherwise one of your rack neighbors might end up eating all of your bandwidth.
Honestly, though, remember this: The more you pay, the better service you'll get. If you pay $100/month for 10 megabit accss to the internet, you'll end up sharing your line with probably 30 other servers. If you're paying $500/month, it might just be 5 or 6 servers you're sharing with. Of course, you'll still need to actually ask and verify that that's the case... It'd be even better if the ISP you chose was nearby yourself you you could check out their facilities occassionally.
If people really wanted to shift away from the x86, the first thing they'ed do is proveide a way for x86 apps to run on other platforms, a la FX32 (is that what digital's app was called?).
If you can provide x86 compatibility across multiple platforms, you could run WINE on those platforms and run all your Windows apps on whatever platform of your choosing... Kind of like Java on steriods.
Anyways, the way to get away from x86 is to provide the means to run those apps on different archetictures. Once those take hold, then you can start deploying native apps...
Or even so, if Wine were ported, would that make it so that Windows apps were just a recompile away from running on other processors/operating systems?
Netscape for Solaris or Netscape for UltraLinux?
For that you can thank Microsoft's amazing track record at porting to different platforms.
Even when NT did run on stuff other than x86, Microsoft was not alone in not porting many apps... No one else did either, except for the VERY few that wanted to/needed to eke out the extra performance.
And it's not just a Microsoft problem. Linux run on close to everything under the sun, but can you run Oracle 8 on anything but intel? How about DB2? WINE? WordPerfect? How about even Netscape 4.x? They all are available for x86 and eschew platforms such as SPARC and Alpha.
x86 isn't going anywhere, no matter how much intel and everyone else wants it to. It's popular because it's popular because it's popular....
How can this possibly be a good thing? If nothing else, it's going to seal Gnutella's fate in the public eye as a tool for piracy. Once Microsoft's content protection system is broken (which will most likely happen... has any access control system NOT been broken, much less any from Microsoft?) everyone will scramble to point fingers at who's to blame.
Is it SightSounds fault for putting the movie on Gnutella voluntarily? Is it SightSounds fault for choosing to use Microsofts system? Is it Microsofts fault for faulty security? Or is it Gnutella's fault for beening a haven for piracy?
No matter what the facts are, it's only going to be reported as the "Hackers that use Gnuetalla defeated Microsofts content protection scheme, which was used by SiteSound to distribute it's movies on Gnutella, thereby causing countless losses to the company's involved".
It's also odd that a company like this would want to embark on SUCH a risky endeavor on the eve of their IPO (they're in their quite period, according to the news.com article). Quite risky. This could move could make or break them...
If (however unlikely, in my mind) they're successful, and Microsofts system stands to the test though, it'll stand to revolutionize a LOT of companies web strategies. No longer will content companies have to maintain and pay for huge pipes to the backbones. They'll just have to get their files uploaded into a few nodes running Gnutella and watch their content proliferate....
You hardly need to run through every combination of letters, though. Once you figure out where the vowel's go and the s's and t's, everything else falls into place pretty quickly.
Something's up. I'd find it very hard to believe that I can decode a message encoded with 88-bit encryption faster than my computer can brute force a 40 bit keyspace.
Can you or anyone else clarify on this?
Encryption is hard to understand. You can't judge how strong an encryption is by its keyspace: a newspaper-style cryptogram has a larger keyspace than DES.
A 40-bit keyspace is MUCH larger than any of the cryptograms that just use letter substitutions.
The only way to find out how good an encryption system really is, is by trying to break it.
Unless you're not a cryptographer. Because even if you can't break it, someone else probably can, in most cases.
If you want to learn more about cryptography, go to counterpane's web site and poke around. Along with lot's of well-written papers, there's also a plethora of links to other peoples and companies' sites with related research and information.
Well, the AES candidates are receiving a LOT more scrutiny than any other algorithms... The top minds from a lot of companies, governments, and univeristies are all at work trying to figure out which one stands up the best for it's purpose of replacing DES. Once one is decided upon, I'd bet/hope that people use it, unless they're qualified enough to explain WHY they'ed choose another that hadn't gone through the AES review process.
Without copyright laws, there's no way to force people to distribute their code.
Even if copyright went by the wayside, the GPL would still be needed in order to force peopel to share what they'd done.
I have NO DOUBT that SAlbini was the first to applaud her effort.
:) -- no...
From centerstage.net:
He's recorded albums for Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Breeders, the Pixies, Helmet, Cheap trick, Jesus Lizard, Bush, and "about 1000 bands you've never heard of." Courtney Love asked if he would produce Hole's recent album, and Albini said -- surprise
Search for them on the internet... Their dispisal of one another is quite documented... Which is what makes the fact that she had to rely on what he said 10 years ago to make her point. The least she could have done is think it out for herself...
"I don't feel like embarrassing Kurt by talking about what a psycho hosebeast his wife is, especially when he knows it already." -Steve Albini, Producer of In Utero
1 - I can hardly see how a subscription model would work. One of the really nice things about CD's is that you can buy them, and listen to them wherever you take them. Most subscription models are built around the idea that you can only listen to them on the computer you're using when you download the song. Plus, you get something physical for your money. Not many people will be content giving their money to a dotcom taking with them only the assurance that they'll be allowed continued and non-interupted access to their music. Not with the way they've been falling like domino's as of recent.
2 - If Napster kills off CD's, it's unlikely that DVD-Audio will even make it to the scene, so thinking that Napster could enable DVD-Audio is silly... The widespread use of Napster is showing that people aren't demanding higher quality recordings, which will make DVD audio that much harder to sell.
3 - No matter what you think and hope, the fact is that the recording industry will and needs to survive whatever transition takes place... WE need them to put up the money for artists to record their songs and publicize them. Napster does nothing to promote new music, it's still the burden of the labels. If anything positive comes from Napster, it will be that artists may now or soon have a bargaining chip to force more favorable deals from the labels.
4 - Record store are still one of the best ways for us consumers to find new music... You can just browse through their merchandise and see what looks interesting. Plus there's employees and stuff who you can hum a couple notes to and they'll tell you which CD the song is from. There are advantages to them, so i wouldn't hope to get them out of the picture just yet. Oh yeah, and CDNow is screwed last time i knew... About to go under, aren't they?
5 - Napster vs. the RIAA is nothing like the US vs. Microsoft... that case shouldn't even be brought into this discussion
Yes, but without it there would be no way that the GPL could enforce upon others the REQUIREMENT of redistributing source code to all who asked. I'm not exactly sure what Non sequitur means, but if it's anything like a catch-22, i'd think we're stuck in a chicken and egg type situation.
Yeah... she's not very original, is she? How nice of here to pretty much read Albini's diatribe from a decade earlier verbatim (she even uses the 7-11 metaphor) without at least giving credit to who first came up with it. No wonder Steve hates her.