This is marketing hype poorly disguised as a news story. The whole article reads like it was copied verbatim from a press release for large scale wireless network solutions. It begins:
GoRemote Internet Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: GRIC) today further extended its leadership...
Panera bread is held up as a great success story for this technology. The only mention the article makes about Panera actually being the largest wi-fi provider is the following:
"Panera Bread (Nasdaq: PNRA) is the largest provider of free Wi-Fi Internet access in the United States with 575 bakery-cafes in 30 states currently offering the free service to our customers," said Panera Bread Chief Marketing Officer Michael Markowitz.
So what Slashdot, we are to believe that Panera is the largest provider because their head marketing troll says so? Jesus, have a little journalistic integrity.
I couldn't agree more. This is a quinessential case of free software selling out it's heritage/principles to satisfy a mainstream business climate.
But of course, that mainstream is inherently hostile to those principles. Compromising with them will lead only to co-option, bastardization, and corruption.
The technology climate has changed dramatically since you wrote In the Beginning was the Command Line in the late 90's. How do recent phenomena (particularly the economic recession) alter the conclusions you drew in that essay?
I have lived in Vermont for the past 10 years, and in that time, I have been proud to call you my senator. You have been a champion defender of the first ammendment and provided a valuable check against the authoritarian policies of the present administration. I have found particularly admirable your visionary stance towards the internet and your efforts to protect its potential to facilitate the free spread of ideas. That is why I was surprised and disapointed to read that you are sponsoring the PIRATE act to allow the Justice Department to bring civil charges against peer-to-peer file traders (1).
In your statement introducing the bill, you argue that piracy limits the diversity of content available online (2). I would argue that the more serious limiting factor is the creative conservatism of our country's increasingly consolidated entertainment industry, whose notorious intolerance of independent artists stifles creativity both online and off. This industry's response to the challenges and opportunities offered by the internet has been woefully short-sighted. Its solution is to develop centralized, industry-controlled online stores that offer Digital Rights Management-protected content. But the restrictions stores like iTunes or Napster 2.0 place on their products make such products little more than digital LP's. Such ventures simply transplant the offline status quo into the digital world, so their contribution to the diversity of online content is limited by whatever diversity (or lack thereof) existed previously. On the other hand, decentralized and unrestricted information exchanges such as those offered by peer-to-peer services have an incredible potential to generate new creative diversity by fostering artist collaboration.
Centralized online stores are but one arm of a two-pronged initative to ensure the entertainment industry's dominance of digital creative content. The other arm is to discourage the use of peer-to-peer services through widespread legal action against copyright violators. The nearly 1600 lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America indicate to me that the entertainment industry has plenty of lawyers to protect its copyrights. You however, seem to believe otherwise and felt it necessary to draft a bill that "will bring the resources and expertise of the United States Attorneys' Offices to bear on wholesale copyright infringers. (2)" I read that statement a different way: "The Justice Department will do the entertainment industry's dirty work and the American taxpayers will pick up the tab."
I too am disturbed by the rampant copyright violation that occurs on peer-to-peer networks. Enforcement of copyright laws is obviously necessary to put an end to piracy, but first copyright laws must be ammended to make them enforceable. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a number of thoughtful suggestions on how to modernize online music distribution (3), but I have sadly never heard any of these ideas even mentioned by someone in a position to implement them. Lawmakers, in which I must now include you, seem to prefer the entertainment industry's strategy of enforcement without any mention of reform. Such policies will only yield draconian restrictions that attempt to squeeze the 21st century into a 20th century mold.
But you, Senator Leahy, did not always feel this way. In 2000 you made the visionary statement, "You can't stop it [file trading]. You couldn't stop it even if you wanted to. What we need to do, I think, is make sure copyrights and patent laws actually reflect the new reality. (4)" Reading such a statement once gave me hope, but in light of the PIRATE Act it only leaves me with a deep sense of betrayal.
Sincerely,
Rafael Rosen 4381 Greenbush Rd Charlotte, VT 05445 (802) 425-2107
References:
1) Wired News. Congress Moves to Criminilize P2P. 3/26/2004. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,6283
And I have to admit, the PIRATE act doesn't seem all that bad. It would simply allow civil prosecution, which makes sense in cases where criminal charges seem too harsh. And since the RIAA is filing civil charges anyway, I'd much rather have the Department of Justice investigating and charging than the RIAA.
Read Senator Leahy's remarks introducing the bill. Criminial copyright cases have such a high burden of proof that they are almost impossible to prosecute. This bill basically gets the Department of Justice to do the RIAA's dirty work for them, relieving the latter of the financial burden and the bad publicity that comes from suing their own customers.
There are certainly guilty pleasures in games. You can play a game and have fun but will never in a million years admit to someone's face the real reason why you had fun. If confronted directly about it, you're liable to try and change the subject, say to some over-idealized pontification on the essential absences of guilt;)
Of course, my inner-Jew takes deep offense at the idea that pleasure (or anything else for that matter) can exist without the opportunity for guilt. Maybe you are of a much more secure personality than I, and truly can enjoy something without being self-conscious about it. If so, then I tip my hat to you, but I also ask that you allow us weaker souls to wallow in our inescapable self-loathing, rather than tempting us with an ideal we know to be unreachable. Believe it or not, we really do like it down here in the real world.
No, WMA is not the same as DRM, but it is associated with it. When the number 1 digital music player supports a format that supports DRM, that will only make the format more popular, which in turn will lead to the proliferation of DRM.
As for why DRM is bad in the first place, it boils down to a very fundamental debate over property rights and the rights of corporations versus the rights of individuals. Yes, DRM does make new products available, but you have to be remember what you're giving up in exchange, which is ownership and therefore control of the product. The value you place in that exchange is probably related to where you fall on the spectrum between sheparded bourgeoise and intellectual revolutionary pinko. Remember, though, that MS wants their DRM technology to extend through every level of the computer, which is much further reaching than Apple's media-oriented DRM. MS-DRM iniative even bears the newspeak name "Trusted Computing."
On Amazon, they have them for 15-25 bucks cheaper than the standard price, but to see the price you need to add one to your shopping cart. The obvious explanation is that they're legally prevented from advertising the discounted price.
Either that or they're hoping to cash in on dumb hipster-wannabes who forget to remove it from their cart.
Second, it will take less than a week for someone to figure out how to access the new BIOS and make linux bootable
But what's to keep Microsoft from including the BIOS in their liscense agreements, with the stipulation that that you not modify it in order to use a different OS?
No one really knows for sure what this deal will do for the diversity of the computer industry, but I can tell you that it sure as hell isn't a step in the right direction. It could be worth the EFF's or Sun's or Red Hat's while to mount some kind of legal challenge to this deal to try to stave off an MS monopoly.
I'm with you. When the story broke that a 12-year old was being sued, the mother was the model of outrage, calling the suit ridiculous and vowing to fight it. Now she's down on her knees repentant and forking over 2 grand.
This behavior just doesn't add up. I can understand a shift from righteous indignation to remorse in order to make the problem go away. What I can't accept, however, is the idea that a single mom from the projects would be willing to throw in $2000 on top of that.
The settlement was reached before the case went to court. Since it was negotiated between two private parties without the involvement of a court, the settlement sets no legal precedent. Our legal system could be easily abused if this were not the case:-J
The effects of this settlement will be to simultaneously make the RIAA more bold and to weaken the resolve of its victims. The RIAA will be encouraged by this case because it escaped the potential public relations disaster of having to press a lawsuit against a 12-year-old from the projects. It not only got the story to go away, it also got the family to repent, thereby encouraging others who have strayed from the path of Righteous Consumerism to return to the flock. Today has made the RIAA more confident of its ability to bully its own customers, and it will be more aggressive with its litigation campaign as a result.
This is a significant defeat for the opponents of the RIAA. They allowed the RIAA to turn a public relations disaster into a minor victory, and it happened simply because RIAA lawyers got the family to settle before EFF lawyers got her to fight. This war over electronic property rights is primarily a war of public opinion. The RIAA does not hope to stop file-sharing by directly suing every file-sharer. The purpose of these lawsuits is to marginalize file-sharing in the cultural consciousness as "piracy," to make it a fad just like M.C. Hammer or the Boy Band du jour. Had the EFF gotten the family to aggressively contest the case, they could have inflicted heaps of public relations damage on the RIAA. Their failure to take advantage of this opportunity is a considerable setback.
I wonder if there is any case law to challenge them on false use of intellect? Any lawyers out there know?
My guess is no, since if anybody is guilty of false use of intellect it'd be lawyers. The American Bar Association probably has a patent on the technique and is cross-licensing it faster than a blonde prostitute that tries to compete with a hardware store.
Take a look at Phish's online music site. They offer everything in both 128 kbps mp3 and, for an increased price, a lossless FLAC compression format. Thus, they offer a product that is indistinguishable in quality from a regular CD, but those who can't hear the difference/don't care can get their music cheaper and easier.
I would venture to say that these same Phish shows will be available on Etree sites, so why does livephish think people will pay for what they A) can get free already from Etree or B) will almost certainly end up on Etree anyway?
Phish's taping policy does not allow the distribution of any commercially released show. Once they release a new live cd the show is taken off etree and it has the same legality as bootleg recordings of taper-unfriendly artists. I believe this would hold for the downloaded shows too.
A lot of people seem to be jumping to conclusions about how this will work. An interview with the president of MLB.com clarifies some details that are rather vague in the various press releases. Important points are that there will be ads, and that the video highlight package is separate from the radio broadcast. Also, the local sportscasters will be retained, and local radio station webcasts will be "phased out," meaning that you can still listen for free for a while.
Basically, you're paying 10 bucks to have every game be available in english, spanish, and french with either the home or visiting broadcaster. In many cases, these options were available before. I don't think its worth it, but as a Yankee fan in Ohio I don't have much of a choice and I'll pay it.
The video highlight service they describe is completely different. It sounds as though that is what you need GoldPass (and therefore non-free RealPlayer) for. Also, it won't even launch until May and promises to give you access to every pitch of every game throughout the season. That seems like a pretty powerful tool, although when it comes through RealPooper software who knows what it will be like.
You know, I thought this guy was kidding, until I read the responses. Anyway, here's my own reply (with a little help from the Woody Allen play "God"):
>So why is it that we accept, sight unseen, that >these things exist?
OK, so these things we don't see might not exist. But what if things we do see don't exist. Or what's worse, what if nothing exists? Or even worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
> 2. set's up a beuracracy that has no incentive to inovate To the contrary, I believe this action could stimulate the growth of the Costa Rican telecommunications infrastructure by putting it to greater use. At the very least, I bet you'll probably see more rural areas wired there within the next few years. Hell, I live in rural Vermont and the cable company isn't prepared to extend the line another mile just so my little house can get decent internet access. However, if internet access was provided by the government, with its complete disregard for cost/benefit analysis, I could probably get it done. True, I might have to fill out a mountain of forms and wait the typical bureaucratic 8-800 week delay period, but I'd get my cable modem, damnit! (Eventually). On the other hand, as far as social services go, free internet access isn't too high up on my list.
Slashdot Mirror
This is marketing hype poorly disguised as a news story. The whole article reads like it was copied verbatim from a press release for large scale wireless network solutions. It begins:
GoRemote Internet Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: GRIC) today further extended its leadership...
Panera bread is held up as a great success story for this technology. The only mention the article makes about Panera actually being the largest wi-fi provider is the following:
"Panera Bread (Nasdaq: PNRA) is the largest provider of free Wi-Fi Internet access in the United States with 575 bakery-cafes in 30 states currently offering the free service to our customers," said Panera Bread Chief Marketing Officer Michael Markowitz.
So what Slashdot, we are to believe that Panera is the largest provider because their head marketing troll says so? Jesus, have a little journalistic integrity.
I couldn't agree more. This is a quinessential case of free software selling out it's heritage/principles to satisfy a mainstream business climate.
But of course, that mainstream is inherently hostile to those principles. Compromising with them will lead only to co-option, bastardization, and corruption.
remember how God used to smite masturbators?
Lesson #1:
/.ed page.
:)
Don't be the first to mirror a
Your server feels only mildly healthier than theirs
The technology climate has changed dramatically since you wrote In the Beginning was the Command Line in the late 90's. How do recent phenomena (particularly the economic recession) alter the conclusions you drew in that essay?
Subject: message from an unhappy constituent
Dear Senator Leahy,
I have lived in Vermont for the past 10 years, and in that time, I have been proud to call you my senator. You have been a champion defender of the first ammendment and provided a valuable check against the authoritarian policies of the present administration. I have found particularly admirable your visionary stance towards the internet and your efforts to protect its potential to facilitate the free spread of ideas. That is why I was surprised and disapointed to read that you are sponsoring the PIRATE act to allow the Justice Department to bring civil charges against peer-to-peer file traders (1).
In your statement introducing the bill, you argue that piracy limits the diversity of content available online (2). I would argue that the more serious limiting factor is the creative conservatism of our country's increasingly consolidated entertainment industry, whose notorious intolerance of independent artists stifles creativity both online and off. This industry's response to the challenges and opportunities offered by the internet has been woefully short-sighted. Its solution is to develop centralized, industry-controlled online stores that offer Digital Rights Management-protected content. But the restrictions stores like iTunes or Napster 2.0 place on their products make such products little more than digital LP's. Such ventures simply transplant the offline status quo into the digital world, so their contribution to the diversity of online content is limited by whatever diversity (or lack thereof) existed previously. On the other hand, decentralized and unrestricted information exchanges such as those offered by peer-to-peer services have an incredible potential to generate new creative diversity by fostering artist collaboration.
Centralized online stores are but one arm of a two-pronged initative to ensure the entertainment industry's dominance of digital creative content. The other arm is to discourage the use of peer-to-peer services through widespread legal action against copyright violators. The nearly 1600 lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America indicate to me that the entertainment industry has plenty of lawyers to protect its copyrights. You however, seem to believe otherwise and felt it necessary to draft a bill that "will bring the resources and expertise of the United States Attorneys' Offices to bear on wholesale copyright infringers. (2)" I read that statement a different way: "The Justice Department will do the entertainment industry's dirty work and the American taxpayers will pick up the tab."
I too am disturbed by the rampant copyright violation that occurs on peer-to-peer networks. Enforcement of copyright laws is obviously necessary to put an end to piracy, but first copyright laws must be ammended to make them enforceable. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a number of thoughtful suggestions on how to modernize online music distribution (3), but I have sadly never heard any of these ideas even mentioned by someone in a position to implement them. Lawmakers, in which I must now include you, seem to prefer the entertainment industry's strategy of enforcement without any mention of reform. Such policies will only yield draconian restrictions that attempt to squeeze the 21st century into a 20th century mold.
But you, Senator Leahy, did not always feel this way. In 2000 you made the visionary statement, "You can't stop it [file trading]. You couldn't stop it even if you wanted to. What we need to do, I think, is make sure copyrights and patent laws actually reflect the new reality. (4)" Reading such a statement once gave me hope, but in light of the PIRATE Act it only leaves me with a deep sense of betrayal.
Sincerely,
Rafael Rosen
4381 Greenbush Rd
Charlotte, VT 05445
(802) 425-2107
References:
1) Wired News. Congress Moves to Criminilize P2P. 3/26/2004. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,6283
Read Senator Leahy's remarks introducing the bill. Criminial copyright cases have such a high burden of proof that they are almost impossible to prosecute. This bill basically gets the Department of Justice to do the RIAA's dirty work for them, relieving the latter of the financial burden and the bad publicity that comes from suing their own customers.
Of course, my inner-Jew takes deep offense at the idea that pleasure (or anything else for that matter) can exist without the opportunity for guilt. Maybe you are of a much more secure personality than I, and truly can enjoy something without being self-conscious about it. If so, then I tip my hat to you, but I also ask that you allow us weaker souls to wallow in our inescapable self-loathing, rather than tempting us with an ideal we know to be unreachable. Believe it or not, we really do like it down here in the real world.
As for why DRM is bad in the first place, it boils down to a very fundamental debate over property rights and the rights of corporations versus the rights of individuals. Yes, DRM does make new products available, but you have to be remember what you're giving up in exchange, which is ownership and therefore control of the product. The value you place in that exchange is probably related to where you fall on the spectrum between sheparded bourgeoise and intellectual revolutionary pinko. Remember, though, that MS wants their DRM technology to extend through every level of the computer, which is much further reaching than Apple's media-oriented DRM. MS-DRM iniative even bears the newspeak name "Trusted Computing."
next time try fewer exclamation points.
On Amazon, they have them for 15-25 bucks cheaper than the standard price, but to see the price you need to add one to your shopping cart. The obvious explanation is that they're legally prevented from advertising the discounted price.
Either that or they're hoping to cash in on dumb hipster-wannabes who forget to remove it from their cart.
But what's to keep Microsoft from including the BIOS in their liscense agreements, with the stipulation that that you not modify it in order to use a different OS?
No one really knows for sure what this deal will do for the diversity of the computer industry, but I can tell you that it sure as hell isn't a step in the right direction. It could be worth the EFF's or Sun's or Red Hat's while to mount some kind of legal challenge to this deal to try to stave off an MS monopoly.
Rafe
I'm with you. When the story broke that a 12-year old was being sued, the mother was the model of outrage, calling the suit ridiculous and vowing to fight it. Now she's down on her knees repentant and forking over 2 grand.
This behavior just doesn't add up. I can understand a shift from righteous indignation to remorse in order to make the problem go away. What I can't accept, however, is the idea that a single mom from the projects would be willing to throw in $2000 on top of that.
The effects of this settlement will be to simultaneously make the RIAA more bold and to weaken the resolve of its victims. The RIAA will be encouraged by this case because it escaped the potential public relations disaster of having to press a lawsuit against a 12-year-old from the projects. It not only got the story to go away, it also got the family to repent, thereby encouraging others who have strayed from the path of Righteous Consumerism to return to the flock. Today has made the RIAA more confident of its ability to bully its own customers, and it will be more aggressive with its litigation campaign as a result.
This is a significant defeat for the opponents of the RIAA. They allowed the RIAA to turn a public relations disaster into a minor victory, and it happened simply because RIAA lawyers got the family to settle before EFF lawyers got her to fight. This war over electronic property rights is primarily a war of public opinion. The RIAA does not hope to stop file-sharing by directly suing every file-sharer. The purpose of these lawsuits is to marginalize file-sharing in the cultural consciousness as "piracy," to make it a fad just like M.C. Hammer or the Boy Band du jour. Had the EFF gotten the family to aggressively contest the case, they could have inflicted heaps of public relations damage on the RIAA. Their failure to take advantage of this opportunity is a considerable setback.
My guess is no, since if anybody is guilty of false use of intellect it'd be lawyers. The American Bar Association probably has a patent on the technique and is cross-licensing it faster than a blonde prostitute that tries to compete with a hardware store.
Take a look at Phish's online music site. They offer everything in both 128 kbps mp3 and, for an increased price, a lossless FLAC compression format. Thus, they offer a product that is indistinguishable in quality from a regular CD, but those who can't hear the difference/don't care can get their music cheaper and easier.
The original Watson/Crick paper specifically thanks Dr. R. E. Franklin. What more would you have them do?
Co-authorship on the the paper. A standard practice for someone who gives you the crucial bit of data.
I would venture to say that these same Phish shows will be available on Etree sites, so why does livephish think people will pay for what they A) can get free already from Etree or B) will almost certainly end up on Etree anyway? Phish's taping policy does not allow the distribution of any commercially released show. Once they release a new live cd the show is taken off etree and it has the same legality as bootleg recordings of taper-unfriendly artists. I believe this would hold for the downloaded shows too.
Basically, you're paying 10 bucks to have every game be available in english, spanish, and french with either the home or visiting broadcaster. In many cases, these options were available before. I don't think its worth it, but as a Yankee fan in Ohio I don't have much of a choice and I'll pay it.
The video highlight service they describe is completely different. It sounds as though that is what you need GoldPass (and therefore non-free RealPlayer) for. Also, it won't even launch until May and promises to give you access to every pitch of every game throughout the season. That seems like a pretty powerful tool, although when it comes through RealPooper software who knows what it will be like.
You know, I thought this guy was kidding, until I read the responses. Anyway, here's my own reply (with a little help from the Woody Allen play "God"):
>So why is it that we accept, sight unseen, that >these things exist?
OK, so these things we don't see might not exist. But what if things we do see don't exist. Or what's worse, what if nothing exists? Or even worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
El Presidente must be a basketball fan, as he's obviously seen a few too many NetZero ads during halftime this season.
> 2. set's up a beuracracy that has no incentive to inovate To the contrary, I believe this action could stimulate the growth of the Costa Rican telecommunications infrastructure by putting it to greater use. At the very least, I bet you'll probably see more rural areas wired there within the next few years. Hell, I live in rural Vermont and the cable company isn't prepared to extend the line another mile just so my little house can get decent internet access. However, if internet access was provided by the government, with its complete disregard for cost/benefit analysis, I could probably get it done. True, I might have to fill out a mountain of forms and wait the typical bureaucratic 8-800 week delay period, but I'd get my cable modem, damnit! (Eventually). On the other hand, as far as social services go, free internet access isn't too high up on my list.