At U of A, this never would have been an issue. Here's how we do it:
IP addressing in the dorms is done through DHCP. How for the first couple of weeks the DHCP server will give an IP to any computer that asks for that one. However, if you want to be able to access the network after that time you must go to a webpage and give it your name, student id, pin, and MAC address. It will then authorise that mac address to get an IP. The routers are tied to the DHCP server so they will refuse to route packets to or from you unless you have authorised with it. This way, it is insured that each student has only one computer using the network. Which eithernet jack you use is irrelevant, since it is computer based. It also makes moving dorm rooms simple, and locating a student in the event of network abuse.
At any rate, if something like this happened at U of A, it just wouldn't be an issue. The most that would have happened is the hall director of the residence hall would have made them get rid of the cable if it was causing problems (not that they'd need to do this, there are 2 jacks in each room), there is no worry of unauthorised network access, since you have to register your comptuer, and you need a student ID to do that (you can only register one per person). It really works quite well.
Well all schools with eithernet access charge for it, with no exceptions. Even schools like U of A. While there is no charge called "Network Fees" or anything directly incurred on the students, they do pay. They pay with their tution and their dorm fees. Plus places like the Wildcat (our paper) have to pay for their eithernet access.
So yes, all schools do charge. I mean they have to, it costs money to maintain the network infarstructure and to get the connections to the internet. Some have explicit fees, others do not, but they all charge in some way or another.
But I'd be lying. This has been comming for a long time, I'm supprised it didn't happen sooner. As with all new technologies, investors were hot on the internet and wanted to throw money at anything and everything related to it. Well, now they are beginning to realise that it takes more than a.com to be a successful company and are looking more carefully at who they give money to.
This doesn't mean that the internet shopping revolution is stopping, far from it, it just means it is going to enter into a new and more mature phase. We are going to see the thinning out of the millions and millions of net companies until only the ones that actually provide valuable services and turn a profit remain. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Ok, you don't have to be a lawyer to find the faults with what the RIAA is saying on their page. Let's have a look at what they say:
Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying.
In refrence to the 'serial copying' thing, I'm assuming the RIAA is refering to these clauses from the actual document: No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any digital audio recording device or digital audio interface device that does not conform to-- (1) the Serial Copy Management System; and No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any device, or offer or perform any service, the primary purpose or effect of which is to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or otherwise circumvent any program or circuit which implements, in whole or in part, a system described in subsection Ok, so what the act says here is that you can't build ro import a device that doesn't conform to SCMS and you can't build a device that is made to remove SCMS. WEll guess what? This part of the bill must have been overturned. Here is a device that, in addition to converting digital formats, will set the SCMS bits to whatever you want. And here is a soundcard that will let you manually control your SCMS settings. I can list a whole bunch more devices that fall in the same category, but I think the point is made: Perhaps when the act was first passed, devices had to comply with SCMS, now they don't.
1. why am I an atheist? Simply put, because based off of my experiences, it seems correct. Based off of what I have seen and heard and read, I am lead to believe that there is no supreme being.
2. how much actual study have I done on the subject of atheism (and the proofs therein)? A great deal. In addition to just generally studying science (which is not directly related to Atheism, but has helped me reach the conclusion that Atheism is correct), I regularly read Atheist resources (like www.atheist.org) ans also have done a fair amount of studying on different religions, westeren and non, and the history of them.
3. how do I know there isn't a God? I don't "know" there isn't a God just as I don't "know" just about anything. I don't "know" that atoms really exist, but based off of the proof I've been shown and the lack of counterexamples, I can be reasonable sure that atoms exist. Same thign with God. I don't "know" there is no God, but based off of what proof I've seen to the contrary (and more based off of the LACK of proof of God's existance) I can be reasonably sure there is not a God.
4. how much of my belief system comes from my parents? Not much. Basically, they never tried to force any religion on me at all. Both of them are agnositc by the way.
is that science/atheism is a faith as well ....sort of. Atheism, well, I suppose I can accept that as a faith. Science, absolutely not. Here's why:
1) Science is repeatable. You yourself can test most scientific theories. And yes, even theories like the Big Bang may someday be testable in a lab (on a small scale). 2) Science is based on observation of the world around us, whereas religion is based off of a writing or writings of a man or men who claimd to speak the word of God. 3) Science promotes questioning and rethinking. Newton gave us the laws of gravity (which you can go out and test if you like), Einstine gave us better ones, and Hawking and others are working to give us better ones still. Most religions, on the other had, discourage or forbid questioning the word of God. 4) Science involves the continual search for a clearer, better perception (hence the microscope and such inventions). Religions are generally happy to just take what their dogma says and leave it at that.
That is why I don't think you can classify science as a faith. Sure, you can argue that it's all in our minds and we aren't percieving anything correctly, yourself into a corner pretty quickly. Take a look at Descart if you want to see what I mean. If you took his premises as true, he managed to prove "I think, therefore I am" but then couldn't prove anything past that.
Well, I can't speak for Katz, but I'll take a crack at your question. I think the reason Katz rails on Christians is because, in the United States, Christians (I use the term fairly loosely here, besically any religion that subscribes to the new testimate) tend to be the most vocal, obnoxious religious group. NOW WAIT before flaming me and let me clairfy myself. I am not saying that this is the wasy that 99% of the Christains are. Most Christians are actually very nice people who tend to keep religion a private matter, BUT there are a small number who are very vocal and very, very annoying. Let me give you an example form my life:
As you might have guessed, I go to the University of Arizona as with most public schools, we are very diverse. We have students of all races, religions, and from all walks of life. Also, as you might expect we have campus orginazations for just about every religion. We have an a Jewish students group, a Musilim students group and so on. We also have (at least one) Christian group. But they aren't called the Christian Student's Orginazation, they are the "Campus Crusade for Christ" and, as their name implies, the take an active role in converting people to their religion. Now I have never, not even once, been approached by a student in either the Jewish or Musilim student orginazations to attempt to covert me. The Crusade has tried (uncessfully) several times. As the matter of fact the stand outside of the dorms at the beginning of the year, asking people to take a survey about their religous beliefes. At the bottom is a space to put your name, address, and phone number. You are told you will be entered in a contest to win a bike if you fill that part out. In reality you will be continually called and harassed to covert.
Also, let me talk awhile on the subject of preachers. Since this is a public university, pretty, much anyone who doesn't cause trouble can come on campus. We see all sorts of vendors and such out in our mall (a large grass plaza), and we also see people selling their religions. Now for the past week there has been a man distributing informaiton about Buddhism. Thing is, I don't mind him. He just has a little table chock full of phamphlets and books and such. If you walk over and ask for information, he will give it to you, but he doesn't actively seek out students and try to covert them. This is quite a contrast the the Christian preachers we see regularly. Just last week we had two people stop by, Southern Baptists. These two come by EVERY SINGLE YEAR and stand in the mall, shouting gospel and slandering our education system. They claim our teachers are raping our minds, that the Jews are evil (because they allege that the Jews turned christ over to the Romans), and that the women on campus that have had sex are whores. Needless to say, they don't get a good reaction. Or, take a man who was here last semester called "Bible Jim". I never did catch his specific denomination, but he was holding the New Testament and shouting lines from Exodus and Revelations. He told our gay and lesbian students that they were evil and were damned, and also made some rahter racist remarks as well (all in Gods name, of course). The police actually had to come by to make sure he wasn't injured by the anrgy mob of students he was attracting.
So Simeon, that is why I tend to have a problem with Christains and rail on them, and I assume that Katz has a similar reason. That's not to say that I don't have Christian friends, but those that are have to realise that I am Atheist, and I don't wish to be badgered about that fact. Unfortunately, of the Christians I know who would be considered devout, only a handful are like that. Most Christians I know who are truly devoted to their religion tend to make a supreme nusicance of themselves by continually trying to convert me.
Where is Open Source music, and who is willing to fight for it?
Well quite frankly, making true, open source digital music would be a rather difficult task. To best illustrate this to you, I'll tell you the process I typically go through when mixing and mastering a song for Empty Head (a small tech/industrial band I work with):
First the lead singer/tracker loads up the tracked music on my computer in his tracker and breaks it down by part. The orignal file is usually around 9MB and each broken down track (of which there are about 8-10) are about 3-5MB. Then, I convert each of those to a.wav file using the tracker software. Each wav tends to come out around 50-100MB depending on song length. Those are then loaded into my multi track software, and I do some preliminary editing. Then, we get together with the guitarists and lay down the guitar and vocal tracks. Usually by the time we are done we are up to somewhere in the realm of 20-30 tracks ranging from 5MB to 50MB each. An average project is about 1-2GB of stored files and takes around 3GB of temp space for the editing. Then we do all the effects, editing and all that. Then, I have my software downmix all those tracks to a single stereo wav which can be burned to CD or encoded to MP3.
Now, how would you suggest I open source that? I suppose I could give you all the tracks in their pre-mixdown state.... If you really want to download a gig or two (and you can quadruple that soon as I'm moving to 24-bit, 96khz recording). Or maybe I should just give you the tracker data and the raw vocal and guitar tracks. Even then, you are still talking in the 100-300MB range per song. Also, with that method, you have no wasy to get the song back to where I had it except for a listening test, since all the edits I make are applied straight to the wav files and not saved. Also, you still aren't getting a truly open sourced song. The vocals and the guitar tracks are still closed. You can change how they sound, but not what has actually been played. To do that, I'd have to send you the actual musicans, and I think they'd take exception to being shipped FedEx:)
This gets even worse when you start dealing with bigger studios that actually have money. I may only be able to do recording to my computer but many studios do their audio to other things like ADAT or Reel to Reel. It wouldn't do you much good if Pink floyd open sourced "The Wall" as I really doubt you've got a 2" 24 track sitting around.
Also, this gets further complicated by misoc that is recorded live and/or to 2-track. I can't open source you the band concert last week that I recorded, cause the whole thing was recorded 2-trak straight to my MiniDisc. I can't recostruct the orignal tracks from that, no matter how hard I try.
At any rate, my point behind this huge rant is that you really can't have open source music in the same way we have open source software. Digital music is easy to make free as in beer but is hard to make free as in speech. The closest you get is with something like classical music where you can go out and gett the orignal scoring. Of course, you still have to find yourself an orchestra, and those don't tend to be free:)
But for practical purposes, any MP3 encoder that is not distributed with Fraunhofer's blessing is probably illegal.
There are many enociders out there (Xing and BladeENC spring to mind) that are not liscenced from Fraunhofer. They just don't use the Fraunhofer methods for encoding, that's all. They are perfectly legal and Fraunhofer hasn't even tried to stop them.
We will crack the encryption, but we will probable need to redistribute the songs as ATRAC3 files since the conversion to mp3 will lose a lot of quality.
Three things: 1) The current version of ATRAC is 4.5, not 3. Almost all Minidisc equipment you encounter these days is either ATRAC 4 or 4.5 and there is a HUGE sonic difference. ATRAC 1 was just horrible. ATRAC 2 was on par with about 80-112k MP3s. ATRAC 3 is on par with 128-160k MP3s. ATRAC 4 is on par with 192-256k MP3s and ATRAC 4.5 is damn near DAT quality (if you come from a clean source). 2) The quality loss of a conversion from ATRAC 4/4.5 to MP3 is minimal. If you like, I can prepare a little demo for you. I have an older ATRAC 4 MiniDisc and if I digitally transfer a CD over, and then take a digital copy back, then encode that to MP3 (at a high bitrate), it is almost totally indistinguishable from an MP3 made straight form the CD source and my gear is of fairly high quality. Even an analogue copy doesn't sound too bad, and the MD's D/As aren't great. 3) ATRAC is not an encripted format. SDMI may be, but ATRAC is not. It's just a psycoacoustic compression model, like MP3.
The story linked from/. was only the latest and greatest. She's been at this for quite a while.
This all first started when she began attacking the women's studies program. After that she was more or less silent until here when McGrath decides that co-ed dorms are immoral. After a huge amount of flame from students, she responds, and says she maintains her position. More receantly the U of A reagents had to get in on this and defend the school. Then, of course, there is her latest and greatest bill, to limit internet acces that was introduced just receantly.
All said and done, she's got the campus riled up quite a bit. Some of the student replies have been most instructive.
Enjoy, and bear with us, this is *by far* the most hits we've ever seen in this short a time span.
Slashdot Mirror
IP addressing in the dorms is done through DHCP. How for the first couple of weeks the DHCP server will give an IP to any computer that asks for that one. However, if you want to be able to access the network after that time you must go to a webpage and give it your name, student id, pin, and MAC address. It will then authorise that mac address to get an IP. The routers are tied to the DHCP server so they will refuse to route packets to or from you unless you have authorised with it.
This way, it is insured that each student has only one computer using the network. Which eithernet jack you use is irrelevant, since it is computer based. It also makes moving dorm rooms simple, and locating a student in the event of network abuse.
At any rate, if something like this happened at U of A, it just wouldn't be an issue. The most that would have happened is the hall director of the residence hall would have made them get rid of the cable if it was causing problems (not that they'd need to do this, there are 2 jacks in each room), there is no worry of unauthorised network access, since you have to register your comptuer, and you need a student ID to do that (you can only register one per person). It really works quite well.
So yes, all schools do charge. I mean they have to, it costs money to maintain the network infarstructure and to get the connections to the internet. Some have explicit fees, others do not, but they all charge in some way or another.
This doesn't mean that the internet shopping revolution is stopping, far from it, it just means it is going to enter into a new and more mature phase. We are going to see the thinning out of the millions and millions of net companies until only the ones that actually provide valuable services and turn a profit remain. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying.
In refrence to the 'serial copying' thing, I'm assuming the RIAA is refering to these clauses from the actual document: No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any digital audio recording device or digital audio interface device that does not conform to-- (1) the Serial Copy Management System; and No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any device, or offer or perform any service, the primary purpose or effect of which is to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or otherwise circumvent any program or circuit which implements, in whole or in part, a system described in subsection
Ok, so what the act says here is that you can't build ro import a device that doesn't conform to SCMS and you can't build a device that is made to remove SCMS. WEll guess what? This part of the bill must have been overturned. Here is a device that, in addition to converting digital formats, will set the SCMS bits to whatever you want. And here is a soundcard that will let you manually control your SCMS settings. I can list a whole bunch more devices that fall in the same category, but I think the point is made: Perhaps when the act was first passed, devices had to comply with SCMS, now they don't.
Simply put, because based off of my experiences, it seems correct. Based off of what I have seen and heard and read, I am lead to believe that there is no supreme being.
2. how much actual study have I done on the subject of atheism (and the proofs therein)?
A great deal. In addition to just generally studying science (which is not directly related to Atheism, but has helped me reach the conclusion that Atheism is correct), I regularly read Atheist resources (like www.atheist.org) ans also have done a fair amount of studying on different religions, westeren and non, and the history of them.
3. how do I know there isn't a God?
I don't "know" there isn't a God just as I don't "know" just about anything. I don't "know" that atoms really exist, but based off of the proof I've been shown and the lack of counterexamples, I can be reasonable sure that atoms exist. Same thign with God. I don't "know" there is no God, but based off of what proof I've seen to the contrary (and more based off of the LACK of proof of God's existance) I can be reasonably sure there is not a God.
4. how much of my belief system comes from my parents?
Not much. Basically, they never tried to force any religion on me at all. Both of them are agnositc by the way.
is that science/atheism is a faith as well
....sort of. Atheism, well, I suppose I can accept that as a faith. Science, absolutely not. Here's why:
1) Science is repeatable. You yourself can test most scientific theories. And yes, even theories like the Big Bang may someday be testable in a lab (on a small scale).
2) Science is based on observation of the world around us, whereas religion is based off of a writing or writings of a man or men who claimd to speak the word of God.
3) Science promotes questioning and rethinking. Newton gave us the laws of gravity (which you can go out and test if you like), Einstine gave us better ones, and Hawking and others are working to give us better ones still. Most religions, on the other had, discourage or forbid questioning the word of God.
4) Science involves the continual search for a clearer, better perception (hence the microscope and such inventions). Religions are generally happy to just take what their dogma says and leave it at that.
That is why I don't think you can classify science as a faith. Sure, you can argue that it's all in our minds and we aren't percieving anything correctly, yourself into a corner pretty quickly. Take a look at Descart if you want to see what I mean. If you took his premises as true, he managed to prove "I think, therefore I am" but then couldn't prove anything past that.
As you might have guessed, I go to the University of Arizona as with most public schools, we are very diverse. We have students of all races, religions, and from all walks of life. Also, as you might expect we have campus orginazations for just about every religion. We have an a Jewish students group, a Musilim students group and so on. We also have (at least one) Christian group. But they aren't called the Christian Student's Orginazation, they are the "Campus Crusade for Christ" and, as their name implies, the take an active role in converting people to their religion. Now I have never, not even once, been approached by a student in either the Jewish or Musilim student orginazations to attempt to covert me. The Crusade has tried (uncessfully) several times. As the matter of fact the stand outside of the dorms at the beginning of the year, asking people to take a survey about their religous beliefes. At the bottom is a space to put your name, address, and phone number. You are told you will be entered in a contest to win a bike if you fill that part out. In reality you will be continually called and harassed to covert.
Also, let me talk awhile on the subject of preachers. Since this is a public university, pretty, much anyone who doesn't cause trouble can come on campus. We see all sorts of vendors and such out in our mall (a large grass plaza), and we also see people selling their religions. Now for the past week there has been a man distributing informaiton about Buddhism. Thing is, I don't mind him. He just has a little table chock full of phamphlets and books and such. If you walk over and ask for information, he will give it to you, but he doesn't actively seek out students and try to covert them. This is quite a contrast the the Christian preachers we see regularly. Just last week we had two people stop by, Southern Baptists. These two come by EVERY SINGLE YEAR and stand in the mall, shouting gospel and slandering our education system. They claim our teachers are raping our minds, that the Jews are evil (because they allege that the Jews turned christ over to the Romans), and that the women on campus that have had sex are whores. Needless to say, they don't get a good reaction. Or, take a man who was here last semester called "Bible Jim". I never did catch his specific denomination, but he was holding the New Testament and shouting lines from Exodus and Revelations. He told our gay and lesbian students that they were evil and were damned, and also made some rahter racist remarks as well (all in Gods name, of course). The police actually had to come by to make sure he wasn't injured by the anrgy mob of students he was attracting.
So Simeon, that is why I tend to have a problem with Christains and rail on them, and I assume that Katz has a similar reason. That's not to say that I don't have Christian friends, but those that are have to realise that I am Atheist, and I don't wish to be badgered about that fact. Unfortunately, of the Christians I know who would be considered devout, only a handful are like that. Most Christians I know who are truly devoted to their religion tend to make a supreme nusicance of themselves by continually trying to convert me.
Well quite frankly, making true, open source digital music would be a rather difficult task. To best illustrate this to you, I'll tell you the process I typically go through when mixing and mastering a song for Empty Head (a small tech/industrial band I work with):
First the lead singer/tracker loads up the tracked music on my computer in his tracker and breaks it down by part. The orignal file is usually around 9MB and each broken down track (of which there are about 8-10) are about 3-5MB. Then, I convert each of those to a .wav file using the tracker software. Each wav tends to come out around 50-100MB depending on song length. Those are then loaded into my multi track software, and I do some preliminary editing. Then, we get together with the guitarists and lay down the guitar and vocal tracks. Usually by the time we are done we are up to somewhere in the realm of 20-30 tracks ranging from 5MB to 50MB each. An average project is about 1-2GB of stored files and takes around 3GB of temp space for the editing. Then we do all the effects, editing and all that. Then, I have my software downmix all those tracks to a single stereo wav which can be burned to CD or encoded to MP3.
Now, how would you suggest I open source that? I suppose I could give you all the tracks in their pre-mixdown state.... If you really want to download a gig or two (and you can quadruple that soon as I'm moving to 24-bit, 96khz recording). Or maybe I should just give you the tracker data and the raw vocal and guitar tracks. Even then, you are still talking in the 100-300MB range per song. Also, with that method, you have no wasy to get the song back to where I had it except for a listening test, since all the edits I make are applied straight to the wav files and not saved. Also, you still aren't getting a truly open sourced song. The vocals and the guitar tracks are still closed. You can change how they sound, but not what has actually been played. To do that, I'd have to send you the actual musicans, and I think they'd take exception to being shipped FedEx :)
This gets even worse when you start dealing with bigger studios that actually have money. I may only be able to do recording to my computer but many studios do their audio to other things like ADAT or Reel to Reel. It wouldn't do you much good if Pink floyd open sourced "The Wall" as I really doubt you've got a 2" 24 track sitting around.
Also, this gets further complicated by misoc that is recorded live and/or to 2-track. I can't open source you the band concert last week that I recorded, cause the whole thing was recorded 2-trak straight to my MiniDisc. I can't recostruct the orignal tracks from that, no matter how hard I try.
At any rate, my point behind this huge rant is that you really can't have open source music in the same way we have open source software. Digital music is easy to make free as in beer but is hard to make free as in speech. The closest you get is with something like classical music where you can go out and gett the orignal scoring. Of course, you still have to find yourself an orchestra, and those don't tend to be free :)
There are many enociders out there (Xing and BladeENC spring to mind) that are not liscenced from Fraunhofer. They just don't use the Fraunhofer methods for encoding, that's all. They are perfectly legal and Fraunhofer hasn't even tried to stop them.
Three things:
1) The current version of ATRAC is 4.5, not 3. Almost all Minidisc equipment you encounter these days is either ATRAC 4 or 4.5 and there is a HUGE sonic difference. ATRAC 1 was just horrible. ATRAC 2 was on par with about 80-112k MP3s. ATRAC 3 is on par with 128-160k MP3s. ATRAC 4 is on par with 192-256k MP3s and ATRAC 4.5 is damn near DAT quality (if you come from a clean source).
2) The quality loss of a conversion from ATRAC 4/4.5 to MP3 is minimal. If you like, I can prepare a little demo for you. I have an older ATRAC 4 MiniDisc and if I digitally transfer a CD over, and then take a digital copy back, then encode that to MP3 (at a high bitrate), it is almost totally indistinguishable from an MP3 made straight form the CD source and my gear is of fairly high quality. Even an analogue copy doesn't sound too bad, and the MD's D/As aren't great.
3) ATRAC is not an encripted format. SDMI may be, but ATRAC is not. It's just a psycoacoustic compression model, like MP3.
This all first started when she began attacking the women's studies program. After that she was more or less silent until here when McGrath decides that co-ed dorms are immoral. After a huge amount of flame from students, she responds, and says she maintains her position. More receantly the U of A reagents had to get in on this and defend the school. Then, of course, there is her latest and greatest bill, to limit internet acces that was introduced just receantly.
All said and done, she's got the campus riled up quite a bit. Some of the student replies have been most instructive.
Enjoy, and bear with us, this is *by far* the most hits we've ever seen in this short a time span.