1. For the Computer User "Anyone who is a frequent computer user probably hears about how one program or another has a security problem. You're usually directed with instructions of where to download the fix or patch. Even a couple of years ago, the security experts that would find the problems would often be thanked publicly or even be given a check. Now, however, it gets you arrested. Dmitry Sklyarov gave a talk on the security flaws in Adobe's encrypted pdf system, and Adobe reacted by having the FBI arrest him on criminal charges."
2. For Adobe's Customers: "Adobe charges you thousands of dollars for encrypted pdf solutions. If there was a security problem in this solution, how would you like it handled? Ideally, it would be a proactive admission of the problem, and the innovation and release of a solution. However, the DMCA makes it possible and legal for Adobe to handle it differently: sue to keep it quiet. When companies use this strategy, as Adobe has in the arrest of Dmitry Sklaryov, a student who gave a talk on faulty security mechanisms, it means that you cannot be confident that your secure solution is actually secure, and you cannot be confident that other people out there don't already have the means to break your security."
3. For the corporate president: "Relying on the DMCA invites you to lose your competitive edge. If you are in the technology sphere, you rely on innovative solutions. You sell your solutions using phrases such as 'time-tested', 'robust', and 'secure'. The DMCA invites you to protect your products not through innovation, but through lawsuits and intimidation. When you protect through lawsuit, you are not protecting through evolution. You may win in the short run, but you erode your long-term viability. When you act as Adobe just has in arresting a foreign programmer who pointed out flaws in their product, you have succeeded in silencing and penalizing the voice of potentially useful information, but you haven't improved your product."
4.For the patriot: "Since the birth of our nation, 'Yankee Ingenuity' has been a phrase that has described the American spirit of our inventors, our tinkerers, our problem-solvers. There has always been an American right to take things apart to see how they work. Now, it is illegal. If someone wants to take apart a company's security protocol to see how it works, with no intention of selling or pirating the media it protects, that someone can be thrown in jail for five years and given a $500,000 fine. Last week, Adobe took advantage of this law and started to destroy a man's life. This anti-innovative spirit is far from what America used to be about, and America isn't what it once was. The man who was arrested is from Russia - and what he did is legal there."
5.For Adobe: "Adobe had a man arrested last week for committing crimes - investigating and talking about shoddy security implementations - that every security professional employed by Adobe would probably be guilty of if the law had existed 15 years ago."
6.For Vladimir Putin: "So you have a citizen, a student, doing PhD work in computer security, and a Russian company that creates software that protects the legal rights and responsibilities of Russian consumers. The product is designed to be used for a person's personal material and even has safeguards against using it for piracy purposes. The company does not sell or distribute pirated material. This citizen travelled to the United States to give an academic talk. The United States government, beholden to a US Corporation, then arrested your Russian citizen and is now holding him without bail."
Actually, EFF offered to cancel protests in exchange for the talks in the letter they wrote approaching Adobe. But otherwise I don't disagree with you.
If anything, it should be a lesson. EFF called for the protests, and the process took on its own life. They can call it off, but the protests might continue. Adobe called for the arrest, and the process took on its own life. Adobe can call it off, but the prosecution might continue.
Yeah, that's not the problem though. It *is* true that what he did was illegal, and it *is* true that given that, he probably should have been arrested. Technically. The problem is that the *law* is wrong. That's why filing a lawsuit won't do much good, unless it's on constitutional grounds. Protests and convincing your congresscritters to change the law is the more appropriate path.
I wouldn't be able to switch my desktop music studio to linux entirely until there is a decent music notation editor. Seems that any score I'd create in current linux software would be given a big fat 'F' if I turned it into a college composition professor, just based off of notation style. The standards are very high. It seems that lilypond is the most advanced, but their longer examples and their font doesn't hold a candle to Sibelius, Finale, Igor.
I find it interesting that the absolute last resort that the article mentioned in dealing with it was sitting down with the tech worker and talking to them about it. But that seems to jibe with my employment experience in silicon valley.
I have not once ever been approached by a manager, even informally, saying "You know, I like some of what you're doing, but I could really use some more of xxxxxx" or "I'd like to see some improvement in xxxxxx". I'm not talking about the old-school microsoftian pseudo-confrontational insults and "motivation" you'll get from some hardliners. I'm talking about basic honesty and constructive criticism, like a healthy romantic relationship or friendship - where you actually talk about potential problems and head them off at the pass.
At my employee reviews (which I had to ask for), they were always 100% positive and I had to specifically ask "What sort of things would be helpful for me to WORK on or improve upon?" and it was like pulling teeth getting them to answer. And I know first-hand that after enough time of being ignored in that sense, it gets easier and easier to start slacking off and pulling attitude.
There are a lot of "prima donna egotists" out there that will probably give you a couple of surprised blinks and then actually be receptive and adult to a manager that goes up and has an honest, concerned, constructive conversation with them.
The heart of this battle isn't about napster, it's about the people being sick and tired of the riaa's bullying and artifical price inflation. If you're sick and tired for fighting your rights as a consumer, move to china where you have no rights.
Fight for consumer's rights at the cost of musician's/artist's rights? There's a real dimwitted battle.
Do you really have any idea exactly what record company an artist is associated with when you download him? Do you know that artist A might only make 35c per cd, but that artist B who has been around for a while makes three bucks? No, you don't. You don't care. You're "protesting the RIAA" whether you're downloading Indigo Girls, Nine Inch Nails, Toad the Wet Sprocket, or Big Head Todd. You're just blowing smoke and pretending that you care about "consumer's rights" because it's a grrrreat way to make yourself feel better for getting free music that isn't supposed to be free.
The thing that really cracks me up is this huge MOVEMENT of teenagers that care about consumer's rights and musician's rights and get all passionate and involved and start FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS and PROTESTING by... by... by DOWNLOADING MUSIC ON NAPSTER! Yeah! There's an active citizen!
You build the fingerprinting software into the client. The fingerprint gets transmitted to the server. If it matches the ban list, the client doesn't let you transmit it. Sometime later the server refuses to let any clients download unless it transmits a fingerprint.
They've got a tough contradiction they are dealing with. On the one hand, their mission is to be alternative media; to let people post news that normally would be squelched in other media realms. On the other hand, if they want stuff worth reading and disseminating, they really need better moderation and editorial control. Any time they start talking about a more restrictive moderation system, I imagine they get in all sorts of arguments.
The problem with most moderation systems is that they homogenize and get rid of the extremes. What they really need instead of basic moderation (where everyone polices each other and where articles are judged by how often folks agree with them) is some sort of trust metric that is seeded from the people that have the reputations of being the most knowledgable and reliable.
(While I agree that the "inbred ideas" thing is a problem with groupthink, that isn't the point with indymedia. The whole point is that indymedia is the alternative to the mainstream media. And it's supposed to be more of a news site where they report on happenings that normally go unsupported, rather than a purely editorial/philosophy site where everyone pats each other on the back.)
But they've got a lot of articles that are really frustrating... for instance, articles that might show some good insight about Palestinian hardships, but that then devolve into some really nasty anti-Semitism. Aside from an example like that being offensive, it's also just a shame because it's a good example of how it undermines its own potential. The site often feels like it demonstrates the stereotype that the protesting population is just continually disorganized and falling off message. It is also confusing that indymedia is just as much populated by anarchists as it is by the nonviolent "peaceful" protestors. There's a lot of infighting going on there, and their aims are very often contradictory.
But overall I like it better than most protest sites because the motivation behind it is constructive - it's not inteded to be a big "insert-vent-here" like a lot of other
left-wing and right-wing sites. And some of their efforts are extremely impressive, like during the election - they had live audio webcasts witnessing Nader's difficulties getting into the presidential debates, for instance, which showed a lot of detail that wasn't in the news. It was very cool. I don't visit often, though - I think I'm holding out for a future version when there is that trust metric and where the discussions are more like sourceforge; where there are political "project managers" visualizing actual goals and mileposts and benchmarks and putting together virtual teams to actually accomplish changes in a methodical constructive way.
check out the recent article on amihotornot.com -
look into the managed virtual hosting over at rackspace.com for instance. It isn't as expensive as full colocation and you can add new servers as needed.
You should probably consider just capping the bandwidth somehow. You can write something so that your site will return a friendly error page if it surpasses a popularity threshold (concurrent hits, etc). Then as you get donations you can give it more resources.
In the long term though, you really will have to be creative about getting a residual income out of it. It used to be that the money you could get from ad banners would offset bandwidth costs, but I'm under the impression that is rarely true now. Think about a way that other businesses could benefit from your resources and approach them... like how hotornot refers people to homepage providers.
Relatable's "player" is Freeamp, a very popular and well-known open-source player.
Relatable's "database"... you are probably thinking of MusicBrainz, another open-source effort which is really, really cool.
If you were to review the websites, you would see that relatable doesn't own either of these efforts, and are only associated with them through open-source goodwill. Their library is open-source LGPL. The folks behind musicbrainz were motivated to participate in it for the same reasons that you are pissed off at CDDB.
Man, the amount of reflexive comments that show no understanding of this is astounding.
First, relatable does not embed watermarks or signatures. They analyze the first 30 seconds of the wave form (yes, they will trim silence if they haven't started to already). This creates a unique id that is stored externally on a server somewhere.
Second, it's really accurate. A cover band will have a different signature than the original. Even a remix will have a different signature than the original. Two different versions of Beethoven's 9th will have different signatures.
Third, it's reliable. A vorbis encoding will have the same signature of an mp3 encoding. A VBR encoding will have the same signature of a CBR encoding. Low bitrate 24kpbs mp3s might have different signatures than 128kpbs mp3s but only because of the substantially degraded sound quality.
Finally, it's really a great idea. Artists can now opt in. Users can subscribe to certain artists. And if you have an mp3 out there that doesn't have metadata, you can use the Relatable TRM to connect to a metadata server like MusicBrainz, an open-source effort which stores the relatable ids and stores the metadata. Relatable is actually quite active and supportive of the open-source world. They are not even close to the bad guys here.
This is a great step for independent musicians. Using relatable (or other fingerprint technology, which is DIFFERENT than watermarking), artists can feel more secure about the authorship information remaining with their mp3s. Metadata servers can also store information about financial transactions. Mix in recommendation engines, and independent musicians have a great new option to compete with RIAA - internet-based, FREE, marketing and distribution.
I don't know if Napster is going to take advantage of all that stuff, but they might. Overall though, it's short-sighted to think of this as another "turn for the worst".
How does the math on this work? Is it as simple as needing 256Kb/Sec of available upstream bandwidth to support streaming two 128Kb/Sec mp3s concurrently?
I was one of those "schmoes" because I cared very deeply about my vote and was still trying to decide between Gore and Nader. There's no question that the Florida thing influenced my vote. I live in Oregon and researched this election very deeply.
It's a lot more confusing than that. The fact is that the correct arrow is pointing AWAY from its candidate, and the incorrect arrow is pointing TOWARDS it.
You can narrow it down to the correct answer by counting down from the top, but a lot of people might not have thought to do that.
It is very common for an appropriate button or checkbox in another form to be vertically aligned at the top of the section rather than in the middle.
If any voter on these ballots had looked for the arrow pointing towards their candidate, and the hole that was vertically aligned with the top of their candidate -- they would have voted for the wrong candidate. In this case, Buchanan instead of Gore.
tune
Re:Borda count wouldn't fix the problem.
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
Your Borda count scenario is flawed - for one thing, "leading in the polls" means that C and D are leading in the popularity method, not in the Borda method.
Borda actually works quite well in a scenario like this year's election because of how so many people are torn between Gore and Nader. People could just rank them 1-2.
I ran a scenario based off of my assumptions of this year's statistics and ran the same numbers through these methods. I got Bush winning in electoral college and approval, and Gore winning in Borda and the "runoff method" (like ICANN).
I think the Borda system this year is better off because it does the best job at handling the "Waste Your Vote" phenomenon.
I made some silly assumptions of how groups of folks would rank the four presidents and how they'd vote, then ran the numbers through the alternate voting systems. (I used the same numbers for each scenario.) I got Bush winning the approval method and Gore winning the Borda count. I got Buchanan finishing ahead of Nader in the approval method (but both above 15%) and Nader finishing far ahead of Buchanan in the Borda count.
That's really interesting, because I just ran through a simulation of this year's election with a Borda count, compared to our current system and approval rating. I basically plugged in percentages that I thought were accurate given what I read in the news. I know they're probably wrong, but the point is I used the same percentages for all for methods.
The assumption I'm making is that there are a fair amount of people that are going to vote for Gore that want to vote for Nader because of that whole "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" thing. And there are also a fair amount of people that are voting for Nader that would probably vote for Gore if Nader wasn't around. And that Nader's overall support is much higher than Buchanan's.
Using majority, I get Bush winning 44% to Gore 42%. Using "approval" (see link) I get Bush having 34% of the overall points, and Gore getting 33% of the overall points - with Buchanan slightly *ahead* of Nader, both around at the 16% mark, due to the many Bush supporters that would probably also mark Buchanan as "qualified".
Using the Borda count, which I think is best because it goes the furthest towards solving the Gore/Nader problem (they can just rank them 1-2 if they want), I get Gore winning the election. Bush is a moderate second, Nader is pretty far back in 3rd, and Buchanan is WAY back there.
It looks like the runoff method would do the same thing. Buchanan would be eliminated, his votes would go to either Bush or Nader, it wouldn't have enough power to push Bush over the 50% mark, and then Nader would be eliminated and all his votes would go to Gore to push him over the mark.
You're thinking of the wrong Green Party. See above for the difference between the two. The whole 100% thing is part of the policy of the more extreme Green party, which isn't the Green Party that nominated Nader (and whose policies Nader doesn't follow).
All this talk about "back at the factory" makes me think of the client-server model. As opposed to peer-to-peer decentralized neurons all collaborating together.
maybe slightly off-topic, but I've got a project up on mp3.com that lets you hear a chapter, make a choice, hear the next chosen chapter, etc. Then you can create your own episodes to add on to it when there's a blank spot.
The first wave of/. responses were from people basically feeling that Napster rocks and that this decision really sucks.
The second wave was a lot more intelligent, people recognizing that Napster isn't really the best example of a responsible musical revolution. I wonder what that says about slashdot readers.
Frankly, I think this decision is a lousy excuse to start protesting the RIAA. Clueful people should have been protesting them beforehand. Even though the RIAA doesn't have the artist's interests at heart, at least their actions against Napster are in line with most artists. Ask yourself why you are protesting the RIAA? For artists rights? Or because you irresponsibly want your free music? jeez.
Napster is a hypocritical company whose actions aren't in line with the rhetoric it spews. I couldn't believe their "Sharing" argument. They'd expect people to believe that a million people swapping cds is the same "in essence" as three friends swapping cds. Please.
This is good for musicians that are trying to protect their investments. Napster has never been a cause, they don't stand for artists' rights, consumers' rights, or anything like that. They has never looked out for any other interests other than accumulating eyeballs, traffic, and bucks.
Slashdot Mirror
1. For the Computer User "Anyone who is a frequent computer user probably hears about how one program or another has a security problem. You're usually directed with instructions of where to download the fix or patch. Even a couple of years ago, the security experts that would find the problems would often be thanked publicly or even be given a check. Now, however, it gets you arrested. Dmitry Sklyarov gave a talk on the security flaws in Adobe's encrypted pdf system, and Adobe reacted by having the FBI arrest him on criminal charges."
2. For Adobe's Customers: "Adobe charges you thousands of dollars for encrypted pdf solutions. If there was a security problem in this solution, how would you like it handled? Ideally, it would be a proactive admission of the problem, and the innovation and release of a solution. However, the DMCA makes it possible and legal for Adobe to handle it differently: sue to keep it quiet. When companies use this strategy, as Adobe has in the arrest of Dmitry Sklaryov, a student who gave a talk on faulty security mechanisms, it means that you cannot be confident that your secure solution is actually secure, and you cannot be confident that other people out there don't already have the means to break your security."
3. For the corporate president: "Relying on the DMCA invites you to lose your competitive edge. If you are in the technology sphere, you rely on innovative solutions. You sell your solutions using phrases such as 'time-tested', 'robust', and 'secure'. The DMCA invites you to protect your products not through innovation, but through lawsuits and intimidation. When you protect through lawsuit, you are not protecting through evolution. You may win in the short run, but you erode your long-term viability. When you act as Adobe just has in arresting a foreign programmer who pointed out flaws in their product, you have succeeded in silencing and penalizing the voice of potentially useful information, but you haven't improved your product."
4.For the patriot: "Since the birth of our nation, 'Yankee Ingenuity' has been a phrase that has described the American spirit of our inventors, our tinkerers, our problem-solvers. There has always been an American right to take things apart to see how they work. Now, it is illegal. If someone wants to take apart a company's security protocol to see how it works, with no intention of selling or pirating the media it protects, that someone can be thrown in jail for five years and given a $500,000 fine. Last week, Adobe took advantage of this law and started to destroy a man's life. This anti-innovative spirit is far from what America used to be about, and America isn't what it once was. The man who was arrested is from Russia - and what he did is legal there."
5.For Adobe: "Adobe had a man arrested last week for committing crimes - investigating and talking about shoddy security implementations - that every security professional employed by Adobe would probably be guilty of if the law had existed 15 years ago."
6.For Vladimir Putin: "So you have a citizen, a student, doing PhD work in computer security, and a Russian company that creates software that protects the legal rights and responsibilities of Russian consumers. The product is designed to be used for a person's personal material and even has safeguards against using it for piracy purposes. The company does not sell or distribute pirated material. This citizen travelled to the United States to give an academic talk. The United States government, beholden to a US Corporation, then arrested your Russian citizen and is now holding him without bail."
tune
tune
tune
tune
tune
I have not once ever been approached by a manager, even informally, saying "You know, I like some of what you're doing, but I could really use some more of xxxxxx" or "I'd like to see some improvement in xxxxxx". I'm not talking about the old-school microsoftian pseudo-confrontational insults and "motivation" you'll get from some hardliners. I'm talking about basic honesty and constructive criticism, like a healthy romantic relationship or friendship - where you actually talk about potential problems and head them off at the pass.
At my employee reviews (which I had to ask for), they were always 100% positive and I had to specifically ask "What sort of things would be helpful for me to WORK on or improve upon?" and it was like pulling teeth getting them to answer. And I know first-hand that after enough time of being ignored in that sense, it gets easier and easier to start slacking off and pulling attitude.
There are a lot of "prima donna egotists" out there that will probably give you a couple of surprised blinks and then actually be receptive and adult to a manager that goes up and has an honest, concerned, constructive conversation with them.
tune
Napster also sends a checksum from analzying itself (the client) to make sure it hasn't been corrupted.
Fight for consumer's rights at the cost of musician's/artist's rights? There's a real dimwitted battle.
Do you really have any idea exactly what record company an artist is associated with when you download him? Do you know that artist A might only make 35c per cd, but that artist B who has been around for a while makes three bucks? No, you don't. You don't care. You're "protesting the RIAA" whether you're downloading Indigo Girls, Nine Inch Nails, Toad the Wet Sprocket, or Big Head Todd. You're just blowing smoke and pretending that you care about "consumer's rights" because it's a grrrreat way to make yourself feel better for getting free music that isn't supposed to be free.
The thing that really cracks me up is this huge MOVEMENT of teenagers that care about consumer's rights and musician's rights and get all passionate and involved and start FIGHTING FOR THEIR RIGHTS and PROTESTING by... by... by DOWNLOADING MUSIC ON NAPSTER! Yeah! There's an active citizen!
(did the sarcasm come through? did it?)
tune
tune
The problem with most moderation systems is that they homogenize and get rid of the extremes. What they really need instead of basic moderation (where everyone polices each other and where articles are judged by how often folks agree with them) is some sort of trust metric that is seeded from the people that have the reputations of being the most knowledgable and reliable.
(While I agree that the "inbred ideas" thing is a problem with groupthink, that isn't the point with indymedia. The whole point is that indymedia is the alternative to the mainstream media. And it's supposed to be more of a news site where they report on happenings that normally go unsupported, rather than a purely editorial/philosophy site where everyone pats each other on the back.)
But they've got a lot of articles that are really frustrating... for instance, articles that might show some good insight about Palestinian hardships, but that then devolve into some really nasty anti-Semitism. Aside from an example like that being offensive, it's also just a shame because it's a good example of how it undermines its own potential. The site often feels like it demonstrates the stereotype that the protesting population is just continually disorganized and falling off message. It is also confusing that indymedia is just as much populated by anarchists as it is by the nonviolent "peaceful" protestors. There's a lot of infighting going on there, and their aims are very often contradictory.
But overall I like it better than most protest sites because the motivation behind it is constructive - it's not inteded to be a big "insert-vent-here" like a lot of other left-wing and right-wing sites. And some of their efforts are extremely impressive, like during the election - they had live audio webcasts witnessing Nader's difficulties getting into the presidential debates, for instance, which showed a lot of detail that wasn't in the news. It was very cool. I don't visit often, though - I think I'm holding out for a future version when there is that trust metric and where the discussions are more like sourceforge; where there are political "project managers" visualizing actual goals and mileposts and benchmarks and putting together virtual teams to actually accomplish changes in a methodical constructive way.
tune
You should probably consider just capping the bandwidth somehow. You can write something so that your site will return a friendly error page if it surpasses a popularity threshold (concurrent hits, etc). Then as you get donations you can give it more resources.
In the long term though, you really will have to be creative about getting a residual income out of it. It used to be that the money you could get from ad banners would offset bandwidth costs, but I'm under the impression that is rarely true now. Think about a way that other businesses could benefit from your resources and approach them... like how hotornot refers people to homepage providers.
tune
Relatable's "player" is Freeamp, a very popular and well-known open-source player.
Relatable's "database"... you are probably thinking of MusicBrainz, another open-source effort which is really, really cool.
If you were to review the websites, you would see that relatable doesn't own either of these efforts, and are only associated with them through open-source goodwill. Their library is open-source LGPL. The folks behind musicbrainz were motivated to participate in it for the same reasons that you are pissed off at CDDB.
tune
First, relatable does not embed watermarks or signatures. They analyze the first 30 seconds of the wave form (yes, they will trim silence if they haven't started to already). This creates a unique id that is stored externally on a server somewhere.
Second, it's really accurate. A cover band will have a different signature than the original. Even a remix will have a different signature than the original. Two different versions of Beethoven's 9th will have different signatures.
Third, it's reliable. A vorbis encoding will have the same signature of an mp3 encoding. A VBR encoding will have the same signature of a CBR encoding. Low bitrate 24kpbs mp3s might have different signatures than 128kpbs mp3s but only because of the substantially degraded sound quality.
Finally, it's really a great idea. Artists can now opt in. Users can subscribe to certain artists. And if you have an mp3 out there that doesn't have metadata, you can use the Relatable TRM to connect to a metadata server like MusicBrainz, an open-source effort which stores the relatable ids and stores the metadata. Relatable is actually quite active and supportive of the open-source world. They are not even close to the bad guys here.
This is a great step for independent musicians. Using relatable (or other fingerprint technology, which is DIFFERENT than watermarking), artists can feel more secure about the authorship information remaining with their mp3s. Metadata servers can also store information about financial transactions. Mix in recommendation engines, and independent musicians have a great new option to compete with RIAA - internet-based, FREE, marketing and distribution.
I don't know if Napster is going to take advantage of all that stuff, but they might. Overall though, it's short-sighted to think of this as another "turn for the worst".
tune
tune
tune
You can narrow it down to the correct answer by counting down from the top, but a lot of people might not have thought to do that.
It is very common for an appropriate button or checkbox in another form to be vertically aligned at the top of the section rather than in the middle.
If any voter on these ballots had looked for the arrow pointing towards their candidate, and the hole that was vertically aligned with the top of their candidate -- they would have voted for the wrong candidate. In this case, Buchanan instead of Gore.
tune
Borda actually works quite well in a scenario like this year's election because of how so many people are torn between Gore and Nader. People could just rank them 1-2.
I ran a scenario based off of my assumptions of this year's statistics and ran the same numbers through these methods. I got Bush winning in electoral college and approval, and Gore winning in Borda and the "runoff method" (like ICANN).
I think the Borda system this year is better off because it does the best job at handling the "Waste Your Vote" phenomenon.
weird, huh?
The assumption I'm making is that there are a fair amount of people that are going to vote for Gore that want to vote for Nader because of that whole "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" thing. And there are also a fair amount of people that are voting for Nader that would probably vote for Gore if Nader wasn't around. And that Nader's overall support is much higher than Buchanan's.
Using majority, I get Bush winning 44% to Gore 42%. Using "approval" (see link) I get Bush having 34% of the overall points, and Gore getting 33% of the overall points - with Buchanan slightly *ahead* of Nader, both around at the 16% mark, due to the many Bush supporters that would probably also mark Buchanan as "qualified".
Using the Borda count, which I think is best because it goes the furthest towards solving the Gore/Nader problem (they can just rank them 1-2 if they want), I get Gore winning the election. Bush is a moderate second, Nader is pretty far back in 3rd, and Buchanan is WAY back there.
It looks like the runoff method would do the same thing. Buchanan would be eliminated, his votes would go to either Bush or Nader, it wouldn't have enough power to push Bush over the 50% mark, and then Nader would be eliminated and all his votes would go to Gore to push him over the mark.
tune
So what's the salivation factor? (I just spit all over my keyboard, oops.)
MP3 StorySprawl
You can read and write the stories and links over at StorySprawl.com.
tunesmith
The second wave was a lot more intelligent, people recognizing that Napster isn't really the best example of a responsible musical revolution. I wonder what that says about slashdot readers.
Frankly, I think this decision is a lousy excuse to start protesting the RIAA. Clueful people should have been protesting them beforehand. Even though the RIAA doesn't have the artist's interests at heart, at least their actions against Napster are in line with most artists. Ask yourself why you are protesting the RIAA? For artists rights? Or because you irresponsibly want your free music? jeez.
Napster is a hypocritical company whose actions aren't in line with the rhetoric it spews. I couldn't believe their "Sharing" argument. They'd expect people to believe that a million people swapping cds is the same "in essence" as three friends swapping cds. Please.
This is good for musicians that are trying to protect their investments. Napster has never been a cause, they don't stand for artists' rights, consumers' rights, or anything like that. They has never looked out for any other interests other than accumulating eyeballs, traffic, and bucks.
tune